Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, if elected to the U.S. Senate next month, he would not vote to cut Social Security benefits. The Republican candidate's statement follows a leaked recording of Paxton, published by The Texas Tribune last week, saying he favors cuts to mandatory spending to balance the federal budget deficit.
“I’ve repeatedly said on the record that I will protect Social Security, including as recently as September 1 and August 21," Paxton said in a statement to Houston Public Media. "Social Security represents a sacred promise that seniors paid into, and they have earned every single dollar. I’ve also said either we keep spending ourselves into mountains of debt, or we find a way to cut spending."
Nearly 5 million Texans receive old age, disability, or survivors' benefits through Social Security, while close to 600,000 more low-income individuals in Texas receive supplemental security income through the program.
The leaked recording published by The Texas Tribune included Paxton's response to a question about reducing the federal deficit, saying cuts to mandatory federal spending were unavoidable and that, "We have to suck it up."
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid together account for roughly three-quarters of mandatory federal spending in the most recent fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
"We have to solve the national debt while keeping the promises we made to everyone who paid into these programs," Paxton told Houston Public Media. "The fake news keeps spinning the same cherry-picked audio to mislead Texans and take my words out of context. I have never said I would take away entitlements from those who deserve or earned them."
Paxton then accused his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, of planning to raise taxes. Talarico has said that the key to saving Social Security and cutting the federal deficit is to raise taxes on the wealthy – in particular, to eliminate the Social Security payroll tax cap for individuals earning over $400,000 per year.
Martin O'Malley, Social Security commissioner under President Joe Biden, said the program's future is in doubt. But he said that's in part because of staffing cuts to the Social Security Administration enacted by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under President Donald Trump.
"For no good reason that agency has been reduced to a 63-year low in staffing," O'Malley said. "If you go into any field office in metro Texas, they’ll probably turn you away at the door and say now you have to call ahead for an appointment or you got to figure it out online. And it’s not right, because all of us paid for this customer service that we would ultimately need to access our benefits."
O'Malley said that a manmade crisis to the program is approaching in the next decade. By 2032, Social Security will face a shortfall in its ability to pay 100% of recipients' benefits.
"That’s often mischaracterized as going totally broke by 2032, running totally dry by 2032, going utterly totally bankrupt by 2032. None of those things is true," O'Malley said.
A more accurate description, O'Malley said, is that the surplus Congress had allowed the program to build up in anticipation of the retirement of the baby boomers did not last as long as expected when lawmakers last overhauled the program in 1983.
"So, the people we elected in the United States Senate are going to be the ones that, absolutely, are going to be in those chairs of our public trust and responsibility, in those offices, and they’ll have to decide: Are we going to strengthen and improve the program for the long-term future, or are we going to cut it, privatize it, or do away with it?"
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