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SALT LAKE CITY — Just days before Election Day, independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin condemned comments Republican Sen. Mike Lee made about ending Social Security more than a decade ago.
But the Lee campaign says McMullin failed to acknowledge that he also said at that time that current retirees as well as the next generation should continue to receive the benefit.
In a virtual press conference with three Utah senior citizens Friday, McMullin said he found Lee's statements "shocking" and "extreme."
"I think Social Security is an important part of the American social fabric," he said. "It is an absolutely critical system that our seniors have paid into for decades, working long, hard hours to ensure their retirement."
McMullin recently rolled out an ad showing a video clip of Lee saying he wants to get rid of Social Security.
"It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it," Lee said at a campaign stop in Cache Valley during his first run for office in 2010.
The ad, however, doesn't include what Lee said immediately after that statement.
"There's going to be growing pains associated with doing this. We can't do it all at once," he said, in a video of the campaign event posted on YouTube.
"We have to hold harmless those who are current beneficiaries. Those who are retired and are currently receiving those benefits, their benefits have to be untouched, unchanged, unphased. The next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years also probably have to be held harmless."
Eden resident Kay Hoogland, a 66-year-old retired employment lawyer, said she's about to fill out an application for Social Security benefits she has worked for since picking peaches at age 16. She called Lee's 2010 comments "provocative" and not focused on finding a solution.
"What I see here is just a threat to long-term planning my generation has done and even my children's generation is actively doing now about how do you pay for retirement," she said, adding, it affects everyone from her 98-year-old mother to her children who are paying into the system.
Hoogland said Lee's comments pander to special interests who might "want to get their hands on" privatization or elimination of Social Security and similar programs. Saber-rattling, she said, is cruel to people who are relying on the benefit.
Lee campaign spokesman Matt Lusty said throughout Lee's first campaign and from the day he took office, he has been "very clear — we must honor our commitments to retirees."
"That has been reflected in every vote he has cast, every bill he has introduced, and every speech he has given regarding Social Security," Lusty said, adding one of the first bills Lee sponsored would have ensured the viability of Social Security for the next 75 years.
In a meeting last week with the editorial boards of Ogden's Standard-Examiner and the Provo Daily Herald, Lee was asked about the 2010 statement.
Lee said he didn't recall advocating for dismantling Social Security or other social programs, saying "that's sensitive stuff."
"But I don't remember ever, in any time since I first became a candidate for the Senate, ever saying, 'No, we just have to end Social Security and uproot all the expectations of those who've paid into it,'" he said.
The government made a commitment to people who have paid into the system as well as those within a couple of decades of retiring, and "you can't pull that away," Lee told the two newspapers' editorial boards.
"You can't create an abrupt adjustment to that without creating a lot of problems," he said, noting he has offered solutions to make the program solvent, including indexing the retirement age to life expectancy.
Lee went on to say in the editorial board meeting that Congress has raided the Social Security trust fund over and over again to pay for other government spending, which contributes to its insolvency.
"So, over time and, I think, we oughta look to, after we get it solvent, look to the idea of allowing people, if they want to, to at least identify some portion of their Social Security payments to go into a private account, if they want to," he said.
McMullin said he understands concerns about the national debt and the country's economic health.
"But one thing we must do is honor our commitment to our seniors," he said. "Yes, we need to get our fiscal house in order, but we should not do it on the backs of seniors by reneging on our commitment to them."
Anticipating taking control of the House and Senate, some congressional Republicans favor plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both programs, according to The New York Times.
Prominent Republicans say the move is necessary to curb federal spending, which grew in both Democratic and Republican administrations and spiked under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden with trillions of dollars in pandemic relief.
