Name: Sen. Bill Cassidy on Social Security, Trump, and RFK Jr.
Uploaded: 2025-07-24T16:37:00Z
Duration: 21 min 15 s
Description: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) spoke about his joint plan with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to help the Social Security program.

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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) spoke about his joint plan with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to help the Social Security program.

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Sen. Bill Cassidy on Social Security, Trump, and RFK Jr.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to "At Barron's." I'm Andy Serwer. And welcome to our guest Bill Cassidy, United States Republican Senator from Louisiana. Senator, nice to see you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Hey, Andy, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to our topic. It's an important one. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I really want to talk mostly about a proposal to rescue Social Security that you've put forward with Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia. First of all, just how dire is the situation with Social Security? We've been hearing about this for a number of years, but I gather things haven't gotten better.

You remember the Billy Crystal, Billy Crystal guy in "Princess Bride"? "It's not dead, but it's mostly dead." Now, you hate to laugh about something like that, but he's not dead, he's mostly dead.

Yeah.

Let me give some context for people less familiar with it. Right now we have that much money coming into the Social Security program, but we have that much money going out. More is going out than going in. The difference is made up because there is an account, the Social Security Trust Fund, that, when in years that we were paying more in than we were spending, that trust fund filled up. That trust fund is now being drained because, for years, more has gone out than come in. In eight years, that trust fund is empty. At that point, the amount going out has to adjust downward to the amount we're actually receiving in income. And that downward adjustment will be somewhere between 21 and 25% for current and future beneficiaries. You're getting a thousand bucks a month, it'll go down to $800 a month or $750 a month. And that's in eight years. We will both still be alive, God willing. And so that is dire.

Yeah, so what is your plan to address this, senator?

Yeah, so it's a bipartisan plan. Tim Kaine and I are the leads, but there's others involved as well. And in our plan we would set up an investment fund separate from Social Security. Here's the Social Security Trust Fund. We'd set up a separate investment fund. 1.5 trillion would be placed in it over five years, and it would be invested in the power of the U.S. economy, just like your 401k. And the proceeds from that would help bail out Social Security. All risk is borne by the investment fund. If the market goes up or down, the beneficiary continues to receive her promised benefits. And whatever borrowing is required to pay those benefits will be, at first partially, at the end, fully offset by the amount of money in this investment fund. That is it in a nutshell: using the power of the U.S. economy to help bail out that promise to seniors.

All right, number of questions. Let me ask you, first of all, where does the one and a half trillion dollars come from?

So that initial 1.5 trillion we would borrow, our country would borrow. But as it turns out, it does not add to our nation's debt. Because the way our country's budget works, if you borrow money but you still have the money in escrow, you could take all the money out of escrow and pay off the debt. And so the money in the escrow will offset the borrowed money. And so borrowing that 1.5 trillion does not increase our country's indebtedness.

Isn't investing money in the market, which is essentially what you're proposing here... You say it's not risky, but what if we have a time period like the 1970s where the market goes sideways for, say, a decade?

Andrew, you're a sophisticated financial analyst. We hold this money for 75 years. And so the longest, I'm told, that the market has been in the doldrums has been, I think, 17 years. The '70's were the period, very late '60's into the '70's. We hold this money for 75. Now, let's assume though that we don't achieve all of our outcomes. Let's assume instead of paying 70% of our obligation, we only pay 50%. We're still paying 50%. We're still getting the benefit of that growth. But most people in the financial market think we're being conservative and think that our returns will be greater, we're trying to be conservative, will be greater than that which we're projecting. So we may end up paying even more. So there is uncertainty, but even if we don't achieve our goal completely, we're doing a lot better than we're doing now.

And would Social Security still be around, senator? Is this sort of supplemental at first or does it replace it? Explain that to us.

No, this bails out. The Social Security program continues as folks have come to know it and rely upon it. This is a fund separate from Social Security, but the benefits the profit from it feeds back into Social Security to shore it up. I want Social Security to last for another 300 years because don't we want our country to last for eternity? If it'll last for eternity, so should Social. And at the end we think that the power of the investment is such that we may actually evergreen the Social Security Trust Fund, which is to say, never have to worry about a financial shortfall again.

I understand that you see sort of a template out there, another program that the government's set up that's sort of similar to this. Can you explain that?

Yes, the good thing about our program is that, not only have other countries done it, but so has the federal government. For the Federal Railroad Retirement System. Most folks don't know, but there is a federal retirement system for workers in the railroad industry. And under George W. Bush's administration, there were fewer workers and there were more retirees, just like Social Security now. And there was a bipartisan commitment to taking their funds and investing it in the market just like we are doing with these funds. And what they found was that the market outperformed, that they're now paying all their scheduled benefits and they're firmly in the black. They've had an 8.9% or 9.2% return on investment on average year over year since they've done this when George W. Bush was president. We've got experience with this. It works. The only question is the scale.

I know you and Senator Kaine are pretty smart guys, but this problem's been around for a while. Why hasn't anyone thought about this solution previously?

People have thought about this in one way or another. Bill Clinton thought about taking the Social Security Trust Fund itself and investing that. People didn't like that, it failed. George W. Bush talked about creating individual investment funds, but nobody wanted the risk to fall upon the individual. So we've learned from that. And President Trump on the campaign trail talked about using a sovereign wealth fund to bail out Social. So we've taken all these ideas. And follow what we're doing. We're taking the sovereign wealth fund, what President Trump talked about. We don't have individual accounts. We know people don't like that. We don't mix it in with the trust fund itself. We have a separate investment fund in which the risk falls upon the investment fund, not the individual, patterned after the sovereign wealth fund that President Trump has talked about.

Right. It's got the market forces involved. So what about the backstory working with Senator Kaine? How did this come about? Can you tell us a little bit?

So there's been other senators involved as well, but I tell people this is a political document as much as a policy document. Because Republicans and Democrats have always been like: "Raise taxes, cut benefits, raise taxes, cut benefits. "Do a little bit of both. "No, can't do either." So it's been a political stalemate. And what you do when you cover 70 to 85% of the unfunded accrued liability in Social Security with the investment fund... By the way, lots of states are doing this now. With the investment fund, one, senators are familiar with it, and, two, it kind of eliminates or minimizes the need to do anything with taxes or with benefits. And so this is kind of the solution that combines, you find common ground between the right and the left. I'll also point out that, in our proposal, we actually increase benefits for some and put in work incentives. Now, that is another way to get political support from right and left. For example, we give five years credit for a parent who takes time off from the workforce to help raise their child. Right now, if you don't work for five years, your long-term benefit is cut a little bit. We give you five years credit so you can raise that child at home. We give a minimum benefit for those who are very low-income, folks who may have worked minimum wage a couple days a week and now they're at risk of living in poverty. We increase them a little bit. We put work incentives in there so that somebody who now, if they go back to work, will get a thousand dollars a month cut in their Social Security paycheck, we eliminate that so, when they go back to work, they can get all of their Social benefit even as they continue to work. I can keep going. Lots of benefits that both Republicans and Democrats like, and that attracts more people on.

Well, that brings me to my next question then. It's called a proposal at this point, right? It's not yet a bill. Where does this stand? How come it's not a bill? Will it pass? When will it be introduced? All those good things.

Yeah, so, one, we do have legislation. We've worked hard at this. There's still some things that deliberately we leave open because we want others to come on board. There's five or six or seven of my Republican colleagues who are very supportive. Last Congress, two Congresses ago, we had seven Democrats, some of them are retired, so we gotta rebuild that a little bit. But Senator Kaine has stepped up. And so we have a bipartisan and bicamerally bipartisan support. Mike Crapo, who is the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who has jurisdiction over this, made a public statement to Politico two or three days ago that he would schedule hearings on Social Security. Lindsey Graham is the head of the Budget Committee. He said they'd have hearings. We are working through the process, and this is part of the process. Andy, we've got to communicate with the American people so that when they begin to hear about it, they don't say, "Oh my gosh, they're messing with my Social." No, they say, "Oh my gosh, they're saving Social. "I'm gonna get some some increased ability "to earn some money if I continue to work. "Oh, this is gonna be a good proposal. "This is like my 401k." This is part of the process of getting it passed.

Right, yeah, you gotta get people off that third rail notion and say this is a constructive conversation. I wanna ask you about the Big Beautiful Bill, which recently Congress passed. You voted for that. In it was your Educational Choice for Children Act, which is the first federal school choice bill signed into law. Why is that so important?

Oh, it's so important. I think the COVID pandemic showed us why. There were schools that were shut down after it was stated that it's safe to reopen. They were still shut down. So a parent who wanted to send her child to school and the public health authority said it's safe to open, and the public school wouldn't open. And down the street would be a private or parochial school, and kids were going there. She did not have the money to attend, to send her child. She's trapped between a bureaucracy that won't open a school even though public health says it's safe to and the lack of resources to send her child where they could get the better education, or at least an education. With this program, we allow a scholarship program to be set up in all 50 states in which she could apply for that scholarship to help pay for her child to attend one of these schools. That is powerful. I wanna be pro-family, pro-worker, pro-patient across the spectrum of what we need for society. And this is pro-family. If that child can go to the school that her mom or dad picks and that child achieves his or her potential, that changes that child's life, it changes that family's future, it changes the future for our society. And I'm about that family achieving their potential. And this is using the power of the tax code to help achieve that. By the way, it does not take dollars away from public education. This is a separate funding stream from public education. That still gets the money. It's an additional pot of money that can be used to educate our children.

Got it. The new bill, the Big Beautiful Bill, also makes cuts in Medicare. Although HHS Secretary Kennedy says there are no cuts. You are an MD senator. What do you say about that?

So a couple things. It's Medicaid that we're referring to, not Medicare, so to say that. Medicare is the program for those 65 plus. Medicaid is for the lower income American who's less well off but of a lower age. And, secondly, I think it's better to call them reforms. You know, people wanna say cuts. That's not a cut. We create a $50-billion fund to help pay for rural hospitals to continue to provide care. That's not a cut. We do have work requirements. We do say, wit a second, if you're 18 to 64, you're able-bodied, you're not disabled, you're able-bodied, you have no dependents at all, you don't have dependents, we asked you to either work, go to school, or volunteer at least 20 hours a week. Now, I'm a doctor who kind of, for 20 years of my life, worked in a hospital for the uninsured. I can tell you if someone is sitting at home when they're able-bodied without dependents, idle hands are a devil's workshop. They do better, statistically they do better, intuitively they do better if they're working, volunteering, or going to school at least 20 hours a week. And folks are saying that's too much to demand. You and I and others are working to pay for their healthcare. I don't think it's too much to ask them to contribute to their own wellbeing. And, by the way, the wellbeing for us all. That's how I'd characterize it, and I think it's a more accurate way.

I wanna follow up and ask you a little bit more about Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy. Two questions there. Again, you're an MD. Are you concerned about funding cuts there at CDC, FDA, and NIH, and also about Secretary Kennedy's vaccine skepticism?

Let's first talk about potential funding cuts. The president's budget has come out, but there's going to be a congressional budget. Always the president's budget has different priorities than the congressional budget. But speaking to people at NIH, for example, they understand the importance of biomedical research for the health of our country and the long-term fiscal health of our country. I'm not so sure they want less money at NIH. They want the money at NIH that goes there to be spent more wisely. Just one example. If we are able to treat and cure Alzheimer's, it decreases the drain on Medicare, oh, by 40% or some number like that. So making America healthy in the case of Alzheimer's is something that's going to do much, do a heck of a lot for our future physical health and fiscal health. As regards immunizations, I'll say that if you wanna make America healthy, you gotta vaccinate. Vaccines have been established to be safe and effective and the risk benefit, if you will, of either getting measles or getting vaccinated, you don't want to get measles, is a lot better to get vaccinated. I'll point out that Secretary Kennedy has said that the measles vaccine is safe and that people should be immunized. We had two children die in West Texas, children, die in West Texas of measles, which is a vaccine-preventable disease. And this is a tragedy. And Secretary Kennedy has subsequently said, "Get vaccinated, the vaccine is safe."

So you're comfortable essentially at this point with these positions in terms of the funding, spending, the budgets, and in terms of the policies he is putting forward?

I would say that I want a more robust immunization policy. I don't want any shadow of doubt being cast upon settled science, that vaccines are safe and effective. And if there are things being said or done which tends to cast those shadows, then that's gonna work against the long-term goal of making America healthy. I'm a doctor, I have seen people die from hepatitis B. I've seen people get liver transplants from hepatitis B. And if you get vaccinated for hepatitis B, an extremely safe vaccine, your chance of being infected is like 1 out of 100,000. So I'm a big believer in making America healthy, and a key component of that is don't get a vaccine-preventable disease.

Okay, shifting gears a little bit, senator. As chairman of the Senate's Labor Committee, last week, you unveiled a legislative package modernizing federal labor law to empower millions of independent workers to have portable workplace benefits. How much support does this have and where does that stand?

We had a great hearing today, bipartisan, in which there was Republican witnesses and Democratic witnesses. And everybody there agreed that the American worker needs to have long-term access to 401k, retirement, and to group health policies. And there might be some differences of how best to get there. But some of the Democrats were saying that their mother, their children, were independent contractors and that they would've benefited from portable benefits. And so I think that there is bipartisan agreement that we need to recognize that independent contractors is gonna be a growing segment of our society, that our labor laws have to be updated to address that, and there's bipartisan interest in how do we help those workers have that access. I've just introduced a bill, which, again, pro-worker, pro-family, pro-patient, which would help that worker get long-term financial security for they and their family as well as cheaper health insurance. And so that's the goal. I think we can achieve it.

Just a quick follow-up there. I mean, playing devil's advocate...

And, Andy, I got time for one more question, I'm told.

All right, can I do one and a half? Tell 'em. The half is just a follow-up. Who in their right mind would be against that kind of thing and why?

So there's some concern, now I'm just gonna say what the people on the left are saying, that there's a misclassification of some workers that are being classified as independent contractors and really aren't. But I think that's a separate issue. We should go after misclassification. We should stop that. But once we know that you're an independent contractor, you should have access to that 401k. You should have access to those less expensive healthcare expenses.

Fair enough. And final question, senator, and I appreciate your time. Going back to your Social Security proposal and the fact that it is so bipartisan, it's so rare these days to see that. Can the American people expect to see any more endeavors like this?

I am working my rear end off. Because that program is going insolvent in seven years, and, if that happens, there'll be a 20 to 25% benefit cut or our country will begin to worsen its indebtedness tremendously. And so I've been working on this for now six years, and we're gonna keep on pushing it. And as much as we can, through a forum like this and others, make people know that this is a way to address the problem and benefits don't decrease, they increase, then maybe we can achieve it. Nothing's ever accomplished by a pessimist. I'd rather be an optimist 'cause then you accomplish something. I'm optimistic.

Senator Bill Cassidy, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Andy.

You've been watching "At Barron's." We'll see you next time.

Sen. Bill Cassidy on Social Security, Trump, and RFK Jr.

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