December 20, 2017 04:20 PM UTC

Mike Coffman: Damn Right We're Gonna Cut Social Security

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• by: Colorado Pols

One of the loudest complaints over the GOP tax bill from opponents didn’t directly concern the provisions in the bill itself, but what the resulting massive losses in revenue from the tax cuts would mean down the road for essential programs like Social Security and Medicare–intentionally left untouched by Republicans this year as universally-acknowledged political third rails, but always lurking in the background as the inevitable next horizon of the GOP’s agenda despite the political risks.

Well, as the Denver Post’s Mark Matthews reports, just in time for the 2018 midterms Republicans will be grabbing the third rail and holding on for the ride!

Coffman said previously that he wanted Congress to deal with the Affordable Care Act in separate legislation — and not the tax bill. But he said Tuesday that he was persuaded to support this path because the bill wouldn’t repeal the Obamacare fine until 2019, which gives lawmakers a year to come up with a fix.

“It gives us time to work on a bipartisan replacement for that particular provision,” Coffman said…

To help deal with the projected deficit caused by the bill, Trump and Republican lawmakers said they plan next year to tackle what they’re calling welfare reform or entitlement reform – or changes to programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

“I think there will be welfare reform irrespective of what happens to the economy,” Coffman said. [Pols emphasis]

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of what Rep. Mike Coffman is saying here. It’s the other shoe everyone with even conversational literacy on the issues knew was going to drop after slashing taxes, which is the biggest reason why the public has overwhelmingly and consistently panned the tax cut bill in polling. There is not now and has not been at any point in modern American history any authentic popular support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. Every attempt to do so, most recently the failed 2005 Social Security privatization campaign from President George W. Bush, has been politically destructive to Republicans in the following elections.

For Coffman in particular, this immediately calls to mind his “Old Coffman” pre-redistricting position that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” After all the effort Coffman put in this year trying to create daylight between himself and the Affordable Care Act repeal, his vote for the wildly unpopular tax cut bill followed by this eager embrace of cutting Social Security and Medicare substantively undoes any goodwill he might have earned with constituents who depend on any of these programs.

And with that, Coffman’s Trump triangulation is revealed to be illusory when it matters most. The voters in Coffman’s district, which Hillary Clinton carried by 9 points last year, are not going to like it.

And they’ll get to express their displeasure at the polls with all of this fresh in their minds.