Busted: Rogers-Endorsed Budget Contains 'Backdoor for Privatizing Social Security,' Treasury Secretary Admits

Mike Rogers’ decades-long attack on Social Security continues with support for toxic GOP tax law that Bessent admits is a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security”

LANSING - In case you missed it, Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the quiet part out loud this week, admitting that the toxic GOP tax law includes a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”

Failed GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers has been an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s toxic tax plan, saying it has “some really good stuff in it for Michigan.”

Rogers has a long record of attacking Social Security:

• Rogers said those who didn’t “deserve” Social Security shouldn’t receive benefits, and that cuts to the program were necessary to “get rid of dead weight.”
• Rogers has taken more than a million dollars from Wall Street interests while trying to help his Wall Street backers privatize Social Security in Congress. 
• Rogers oversaw Congressional efforts to overhaul Social Security that experts say would have “decimated” seniors’ retirement accounts during the Great Recession. 

“Mike Rogers has spent decades scheming to gut Social Security while pocketing hundreds of thousands from Wall Street, and now he’s backing Trump’s ‘backdoor’ plan to privatize the program,” said Joey Hannum, Michigan Democratic Party spokesman. “Michigan seniors can’t trust Rogers gambling with their retirement.”

Read more here:

• Washington Post: Trump’s newborn savings accounts a ‘back door for privatizing Social Security,’ Bessent says (07/30/25)
• The newborn savings accounts created as part of President Donald Trump’s massive new tax and immigration law are a “back door for privatizing Social Security,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday.
• “On one hand, what they are doing is they are making Social Security less solvent and a riskier proposition for people,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “On the other hand, the treasury secretary seems to be musing out loud about the idea of beginning to privatize the system.”
• Previous Republican administrations have discussed privatizing Social Security. President George W. Bush pitched partially privatizing the program with individual private investment accounts.
• The idea was politically unpopular, and it contributed to historic losses for Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections, giving Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and largely ending the Bush administration’s legislative agenda.

• The Michigan Independent: GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers supported private investment of Social Security funds (10/07/24)

• Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers said last year that he supports a major overhaul of the Social Security system. Over the course of his 14 years in Congress, he backed efforts to change it, including a risky plan to partially privatize the program and have Americans invest benefit funds individually and directly in the stock market.
• He was then asked about an unsuccessful 2005 effort by President George W. Bush to change the system from one where everyone puts part of their income into the Social Security trust fund and is guaranteed retirement benefits with an option for Americans to invest one-third of their payroll tax funds in the stock market… Rogers… had been a vocal backer of Bush’s initiative.
• As Wall Street banks melted down, the Great Recession of 2008 saw what was, at the time, the largest stock market crash in history. Between October 2007 and March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than half. 
• Had the approach backed by Bush and Rogers been in place at that time, retirees would have seen part of their retirement savings decimated. According to a Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis, someone who retired on Oct. 1, 2008, would have lost about $26,000 had some of their Social Security funds been invested in stocks over a period of 35 years. 
• Partial Social Security privatization would mean billions of dollars collected in additional fees for Wall Street investment firms, some of whom have openly embraced the idea.