Gov. Ron DeSantis says people aren’t living as long as they used to, so that should help protect them from losing Social Security and Medicare protections when they get old.
“It should reflect life expectancy and what we’ve had in this country is a pretty significant decline in life expectancy. And so given those circumstances to raise (qualifying ages), it would be cutting against where the demographics are going. So that’s not going to happen,” the Governor said in Iowa Saturday.
DeSantis made the comments during a Never Back Down event in Garner, and they continue a theme of recent vintage where he has noted that people are dying at younger ages than they did years back.
During an interview earlier this month, the Florida Governor told CNBC viewers that “in the last five or six years, life expectancy in the United States has gone down.”
He did not blame it solely on the COVID-19 pandemic, even after his interviewer’s prompting.
“I think it started before COVID and I think it’s continued even here afterwards. I think it’s more than, more than just COVID. I mean, I think that there’s deaths of despair. I think you have (drugs),” DeSantis said.
“So, I think it’s hard to say, you know, raise the age (for Social Security eligibility) when the average life expectancy is going down. We used to think that life expectancy was just going to keep going up and that’s just not been the case.”
DeSantis’ position on senior citizen entitlements has been a moving target in recent months, as he has been walking back previous calls for “market forces” and privatization to replace the current programs.
DeSantis has said before that changes for younger generations are inevitable, noting he doesn’t expect to draw the entitlement without material changes in federal practices.
“I think a lot of younger people like me are receptive to this because I don’t assume we’re going to get any of this at this point right now,” the 44-year-old Governor said during a May interview with John Stossel.
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