Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday his colleagues in Washington are too afraid to do what, he says, is necessary to close the funding gap in the U.S. Social Security system.
“People are upset about taking money from Social Security and spending it on immediate concerns that have nothing to do with Social Security,” the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News.
In his response to a viewer’s question about how he would “preserve” the federal income-security program, Paul said he start by “gradually raising the age” for collecting Social Security benefits.
“Everybody knows the age has to go up,” he told Fox News’ Jenna Lee. “Let the age go up a couple of months every year for the next 20 years and that fixes two-thirds of the problems with Social Security.”
He continued, “Then people like myself, who have done pretty well in life, would get a couple hundred dollars less through means testing when Social Security gets fixed — that fixes the entire problem.”
Then Kentucky senator said the problem, however, is that “somebody has to have the guts to fix it.”
“Most people up here are basically wimps,” Paul said of his fellow lawmakers. “They’re unwilling to say, ‘This is what it takes to fix the problem.'”
Paul dropped to tenth in this week’s Washington Examiner presidential power rankings. He stands at 3 percent support among Republican voters nationwide, according to the latest polling data from RealClearPolitics.
