Scott Bessent Calls New Tax Policy ‘Backdoor For Privatizing Social Security’

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday described the tax bill President Donald Trump signed into law this month as a way of eventually privatizing Social Security.

The law created a new category of tax-advantaged retirement savings accounts for babies, called “Trump Accounts,” that will be initially seeded with $1,000 from the government.

Speaking at an event hosted by Breitbart News, Bessent suggested the accounts could so enamor Americans with the magic of private investing that they will eventually clamor for the privatization of the federal government’s popular old-age insurance program.

Democrats have long accused Republicans of wanting to privatize Social Security, especially after former president George W. Bush proposed doing so in his second term. The idea was so unpopular it helped Democrats retake both the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections.

Trump famously broke from Republican orthodoxy on Social Security, insisting that he would never touch the beloved retirement program. At the start of his second term, however, agents from Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” pushed for layoffs and other changes to operations of the Social Security Administration, and Democrats have claimed it was all part of a plot to privatize Social Security.

So Bessent’s remarks Wednesday have not passed unnoticed, even if he was imagining a hypothetical future rather than actually proposing privatization.

“Calling this a five-alarm fire is an understatement, and between Bessent’s comments and the harm DOGE has already done to the agency, it’s clear Trump was lying all along about protecting Social Security,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement. “Like every Republican administration going back multiple generations, Trump and his billionaire cabinet want to privatize Social Security to give their Wall Street buddies a payday.”