By MICHELLE L. PRICE and LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — The youngsters’s financial savings program included in President Donald Trump’s tax break-and-spending minimize legislation “is a back door for privatizing Social Security,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated Wednesday.
“Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just said the quiet part out loud: The administration is scheming to privatize Social Security,” Tim Hogan, a spokesperson for the Democratic Nationwide Committee, stated in an announcement.
The White Home didn’t instantly reply to a message about Bessent’s remarks.
The GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” because the legislation known as, created a brand new youngsters’s financial savings program, Trump Accounts, which may be created for infants born within the U.S. and include a possible $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.
The accounts can develop over time, a lot the way in which school financial savings plans or different accounts do, and the gathered funds can finally be tapped in maturity.
However Bessent on Wednesday allowed for one more possibility for the accounts.
“In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security,” Bessent stated whereas talking about this system.
Bessent’s feedback had been putting for his informal revival of a polarizing situation.
Ever because the George W. Bush administration thought of proposals to denationalise Social Safety greater than 20 years in the past, Republicans have publicly moved away from speaking in regards to the situation that proved politically unpopular and was swiftly deserted.
Democrats on the time used GOP plans to denationalise Social Safety within the run-up to the 2006 midterm elections and gained again management of each Home and Senate in Congress.
The Democrats warned Wednesday that Republicans are once more attempting to dismantle the long-running retirement program.
“It wasn’t enough to kick millions of people off their health care and take food away from hungry kids. Trump is now coming after American seniors with a ‘backdoor’ scam to take away the benefits they earned,” Hogan on the DNC stated within the assertion.
Initially Printed: July 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM PDT
