Highlights:
HEADLINE: American Journal News: “GOP Ohio Senate Nominee J.D. Vance Has Supported Cuts To Social Security And Medicare” [American Journal News, 7/7/22]
Vance Regularly Wrote On A Blog Called FrumForum Under A Pseudonym. According to the Atlantic, “The site was called FrumForum.com. From 2009 to 2012, it tried to imagine a reformed Republican Party: more economically inclusive, more culturally modern, more environmentally aware. The project proved unsuccessful, to put it mildly. Yet it attracted dozens of young writers who subsequently advanced to important careers and high reputations. One of them was J. D. Vance. Vance wrote for FrumForum under a pseudonym.” [Atlantic, 5/10/22]
Vance Claimed That People Would Overreact To Ryan’s Proposed Budget Cuts To Medicare. According to JD Vance via a blog post on FrumForum, “Tomorrow, Rep. Paul Ryan will release his highly anticipated budget plan. Early reports suggest that along with serious changes to Social Security and Medicare, the budget will trim nearly $4 trillion from the 10-year budget deficit. I don’t know how the Left will react, but I’m confident that they’ll overreact. And I’m hoping that when the dust settles, we’re having a more intelligent conversation about spending cuts than we’ve had during my lifetime.” [Vance via FrumForum, 4/5/11]
Vance Rebuked Emotional Pleas To Save The Programs And Said That “Budget Cuts Are Coming” Because Of The Aging Population. According to JD Vance via a blog post on FrumForum, “Of all the things I can’t stand about politics, the tendency to emotionalize a difficult topic is probably the worst. Budget cuts hurt—just ask our friends in the United Kingdom. But budget cuts are coming, because our entire welfare system depends on a false premise: a rapidly growing population. It’s a pretty simple concept: the taxes from young workers support the benefits of elderly dependents, so the system works fine so long as the young significantly outnumber the old. Our system is stressed because the number of retirees is growing at a faster pace than the number of workers.” [Vance via FrumForum, 4/5/11]
Vance Called For Reforming Social Security And Medicare. According to JD Vance via a blog post on FrumForum, “The way forward is as obvious as it is politically difficult: streamline the tax code, reform current entitlements and avoid enacting new ones.” [Vance via FrumForum, 4/5/11]
The Proposed System For Ryan’s Medicare Restructuring Would Have Increased Out-Of-Pocket Costs For Medicare Users. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “On April 5, 2011, Chairman Paul Ryan of the House Budget Committee released a proposed budget resolution for the fiscal year (FY) 2012. […] For Medicare, the chairman would fundamentally transform the program from its fee-for-service model to a “premium support” model beginning in 2022. Under this reform, the government would make a premium-support payment to an approved private insurance plan that was chosen by the Medicare beneficiary. […] However, CBO also found that under the proposal, most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system.” [Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 4/6/11]
Ryan’s Plan Would Have Slashed Programs Like Medicare And Medicaid. According to American Journal News, “Meanwhile, in 2011 the author and venture capitalist embraced a controversial GOP budget proposal that would have slashed entitlement protections for poorer and older Americans, ending both Medicare and Medicaid as we know them while cutting taxes for himself and other wealthy elites.” [American Journal News, 7/7/22]
Ryan’s Proposed Cuts Would Have Cut Trillions From Programs Like Social Security And Medicare. According to American Journal News, “Ryan’s proposed budget called for trillions of dollars to be cut from entitlement programs over a decade: repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the program commonly known as Obamacare that provides health insurance coverage for millions of Americans; transformation of Medicaid into a program funded through limited lump-sum grants to states, which would then manage it; and conversion of Medicare into a capped voucher program.” [American Journal News, 7/7/22]
Vance Described The Budget As “Bleak” Because Of Social Security And Medicare Costs. According to JD Vance via his blog, “Social Security, and especially Medicare, grow rapidly relative to tax revenue increases. Some policy experts estimate that Medicare will consume well over half of the budget—by itself—before my generation sees any benefits. Basically, our budget situation is bleak, and it grows worse over time.” [Vance via his personal blog, 12/11/10]
Vance Lamented That Republicans Refused To Embrace “Fiscal Sanity” By Cutting Social Security And Medicare. According to JD Vance via his blog, “The political obstacles intimidate more than the practical problems. The party of, umm, limited government—the Republican Party—is also the party of the aging white person. The party’s only solid constituency thus depends on the Medicare and Social Security Benefits that are the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.” [Vance via his personal blog, 12/11/10]
Vance Once Called Social Security An Impossible Program To Finance. According to MSNBC, “LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: When J.D. Vance was a Republican venture capitalist he talked about social security being, basically, as far as he was concerned, an impossible government program, to finance and to continue.” [MSNBC, 11/8/24]
Vance Praised Governor Huntsman For His Plan To Reduce Spending On Programs Like Social Security And Medicare. According to Vance via FrumForum, “One of them presided over arguably the best business climate in the nation, so good that Forbes magazine ranked it as the best state for business and careers. As governor, he enacted free-market health care reforms, balanced the budget, and thus far is the most public advocate of the Ryan plan to reduce long-term entitlement spending […] Jon Huntsman is, of course, the first guy.” [Vance via FrumForum, 9/7/11]
Vance Said He Disapproved Of Republicans For Turning To Rick Perry, Who Vance Said Had “No Serious Plan To Curb Entitlement Spending.” According to Vance via FrumForum, “The American Right is no longer a bastion of maturity, but a factory of anger and contradiction […] We criticize federal spending, and then lambast Jon Huntsman, the only candidate to endorse a serious plan to control it. That same movement is ready to coronate Rick Perry, a man with no serious plan to curb entitlement spending.” [Vance via FrumForum, 9/7/11]