— Voice-over in a video ad by MAGA Inc., released May 19
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gears up for his planned announcement this week that he’s running for president, a political organization supporting Donald Trump has been running ads with biting (and often amusing) attacks on policy positions taken by the governor when he was a member of Congress.
Past policy positions are, of course, frequent fodder for attack ads. Sometimes such ads highlight non-consequential votes in misleading ways. The ads might also focus on a policy position that was once popular within a political party but has since been abandoned. Never mind that the politician being attacked might have an entirely new policy proposal; the ads seek to remind voters that he or she once embraced it.
What’s unusual about the pro-Trump ads is that they attack DeSantis for policy positions that once enjoyed broad support within the Republican Party — so much so that Trump also embraced these same ideas.
In other words, these ads offer a template for President Biden to attack either Trump or DeSantis if either becomes the Republican presidential nominee.
Let’s look at these issues in detail.
The ad says DeSantis voted three times to “cut Social Security” and wanted to raise the retirement age to 70. (The age for receiving full Social Security benefits is 67 for people born in 1960 or later.)
The votes refer to budget plans drawn by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative group of House members, that DeSantis, as a member of Congress, supported in 2013, 2014 and 2015. These plans sought to rapidly reduce the federal budget and included proposals that proponents said would put Social Security and Medicare on stronger financial footing.
For instance, a key feature of Social Security is that its monthly benefits are adjusted for inflation every year. But some experts, including some Democrats, say the current formula overstates the impact of inflation on seniors. The budgets backed by DeSantis would have adopted a “chained CPI” — chained consumer price index — which is a different way of calculating increases in the cost of living. It assumes people adjust buying patterns when prices change, and it results in a slightly lower rate of inflation. So benefits for programs such as Social Security grow at a slower rate — a policy adjustment often attacked as a cut.
The budget resolutions also called for raising the retirement age for younger workers to 70. In a 2012 interview with the St. Augustine Record, when DeSantis was in his mid-30s, he said he would not change the program for people age 55 and older. But he noted a federal budget squeeze was coming, as fewer workers were expected to support a large cohort of retirees. “For me getting Social Security at 65 or 67, if I’m going to live in my 80s, is probably not sustainable,” he said.
These were standard GOP positions at the time. Indeed, Trump also expressed support for raising the retirement age to 70.
In a 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” published when Trump sought the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, Trump made an emphatic case for a higher retirement age.
“A firm limit at age seventy makes sense for people now under forty,” Trump wrote. “We’re living longer. We’re working longer. New medicines are extending healthy human life. Besides, how many times will you really want to take that trailer to the Grand Canyon? The way the workweek is going, it will probably be down to about twenty-five hours by then anyway. This is a sacrifice I think we all can make.”
In the same book, Trump called for “directing Social Security funds into personal accounts,” which he labeled a “privatization” of the program. That was also broadly supported by Republicans at the time — President George W. Bush pushed hard for the idea in 2005, but Congress rejected it — and DeSantis also expressed supported for the concept in his St. Augustine Record interview.
We couldn’t find a specific example of Trump’s supporting changing the inflation formula for Social Security, but his administration proposed using chained CPI for welfare benefits. Running for president, Trump sidestepped a question about changing the benefit formula posed by AARP by answering: “As our demography changes, a prudent administration would begin to examine what changes might be necessary for future generations.” (In the same AARP candidate Q&A, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton emphatically said she would “oppose reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments” and “oppose Republican efforts to raise the retirement age.”)
As president, Trump in 2020 vaguely spoke of reforming entitlement programs such as Social Security: “At the right time, we will take a look at that.” Now, he says any changes to the retirement program are off the table.
So does DeSantis. Asked by Fox News in March about the possibility of raising the retirement age to 70, DeSantis replied: “We are not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.” Instead, he pivoted and attacked Biden for having a long record of seeking to reduce Social Security benefits. As we have documented before, those proposals were intended to deal with the same budget issues once identified by DeSantis — or to offer an alternative to more extreme options offered by Republicans.
The ad accuses DeSantis of wanting to “privatize Medicare,” the government-provided health program for the elderly. This is a reference to his support for a proposal advanced in 2011 by then-Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to transform Medicare into a competitive market for future retirees.
Under Ryan’s plan, seniors would have received a set payment adjusted to inflation, which retirees would use to pick from a range of plans offered by insurance companies. Different plans approved by Medicare would compete for business; insurance companies participating in the program would have to accept all retirees.
Ryan was the GOP vice-presidential nominee in 2012 and later became House speaker, but Republicans abandoned the idea after Democrats attacked it enough that it became a political liability. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that under the plan, within 20 years the federal government would pay only 32 percent of health-care costs, less than half the percentage paid by traditional Medicare.
But guess who also supported the Ryan plan at the time?
Ryan is “saying he’s going to save Medicare, because if you keep going the Obama route, Medicare is not going to exist any longer,” Trump told Fox News in 2012. “… I think Paul Ryan and [GOP presidential nominee] Mitt Romney will save Medicare. I know they will. And people are starting to understand it.”
Finally, the pro-Trump group repeatedly has attacked DeSantis for having expressed support for a “FairTax” system. As a member of Congress, DeSantis several times co-sponsored a bill that would implement a sweeping new tax system.
The FairTax proposal would eliminate all other federal taxes — such as income taxes, payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and estate taxes — and replace those taxes with a 30 percent “consumption tax.” That’s essentially like a federal retail sales tax. It’s different from the value-added tax used in many European countries. A VAT is added not just at the retail level and co-exists with other taxes that FairTax advocates say would be eliminated.
(FairTax advocates tout a 23 percent tax rate, which is echoed in the MAGA ads. But this is a “tax-inclusive” figure, meaning it reflects the percentage after including the 30 percent tax in the purchase. A $100 item would cost $130 after the tax is imposed, meaning the $30 tax is 23 percent of the total post-tax price.)
In other words, a FairTax would impose a completely different system — a single tax instead of many different taxes. In the voice-over of the ads, the MAGA group suggests DeSantis would impose a 23 percent tax on top of other taxes, but in text there’s often a brief disclaimer such as “to replace the current system.” Few viewers are likely to catch that distinction.
The FairTax is still popular among some Republicans, because it would in effect eliminate a need for the Internal Revenue Service and annual tax filings. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to allow a vote on the bill as a condition to win enough support from the House Freedom Caucus to secure the speakership. Biden has already pledged to veto it if the bill came to his desk, which is unlikely.
The MAGA ads cite an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center that shifting to a FairTax system would result in a regressive tax system that would place more burden on the middle class and result in a big tax cut for the wealthy. The nonpartisan organization also says the FairTax would not raise enough revenue and send the federal budget deficit soaring.
As far as we can tell, DeSantis has not backed away from his support of the idea, though he also appears not to have talked about it since he left Congress and became governor. But guess who also talked it up? That’s right, Trump, during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“But a fair tax or a flat tax or somebody — in Europe, they do the VAT tax, which actually is pretty simple, based on consumption, and it does simplify things a lot. It’s got its big advantages, some disadvantages,” Trump told Fox News in 2015. American Bridge, a Democratic research group, has collected a variety of such quotes, and a pro-DeSantis PAC, Never Back Down, has released a video compilation. That’s not the same as co-sponsoring a bill, but Trump did indicate he looked upon the FairTax with favor.
Of course, once Trump became president, he did not pursue a FairTax at all. Instead he backed a more conventional tax plan in 2017 that reduced taxes across the board — what the ads call a “massive tax cut.” But who voted for that tax bill when he was a member of Congress? DeSantis.
“Trump is being swindled by his establishment consultants, who are stealing attack ads from the establishment forces DeSantis crushed by 20 points 5 years ago,” said Never Back Down communications director Erin Perrine, referring to a similar tax ad aired by a GOP opponent of DeSantis in the 2018 governor’s race. “As conservatives said then, this dishonest attack is false — and it’s even more lame given that Trump himself supported the exact same fair tax proposal, and he’s touted the support of House members who voted for it this year. Ron DeSantis defends taxpayers and has cut taxes for the people of Florida.” She added that MAGA Inc. was relying on “Democratic lies” to attack DeSantis on Social Security and Medicare and he should “stop stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook.”
Alex Pfeiffer, spokesman for MAGA Inc., defended the ads. “There is a clear record from their time in Washington. Ron DeSantis tried to raise taxes. President Trump cut taxes. Ron DeSantis repeatedly targeted Social Security and Medicare. President Trump, by contrast, protected seniors’ benefits,” he said in a statement.
When Trump was president, we dubbed him “the king of flip-flops,” given his propensity to shamelessly shift policy positions while insisting he was being consistent. Judging from these ads, the same attitude prevails among his supporters at MAGA Inc., given how gleefully they attack DeSantis for positions that Trump once appeared to support.
DeSantis’s old policy positions are fair game, but they may not reflect policies he would embrace if he became president. MAGA Inc. shows remarkable hypocrisy in making these attacks without acknowledging that Trump is vulnerable on these fronts, too. The ads earn Two Pinocchios.
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