Former US president Joe Biden, in his first major speech since leaving the White House, railed on Tuesday against his successor Donald Trump\u2019s frenetic government overhaul, claiming the \u201chatchet\u201d effort put Americans\u2019 retirement benefits at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cFewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage, and so much destruction \u2014 it\u2019s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,\u201d Biden told a conference of disability advocates in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security administration, pushing 7,000 employees out the door,\u201d said the former president, referring to the national agency which pays out retirement and disability benefits.<\/p>\n
Wearing a blue suit and tie, and standing in front of American flags, the 82-year-old Democrat spoke for around a half-hour, displaying at times the signs of ageing that prompted him to abandon his re-election campaign last year.<\/p>\n
He stumbled over some sentences as he read from a teleprompter and struggled to get through winding off-the-cuff anecdotes, cutting himself off with a favourite phrase, \u201canyways\u201d.<\/p>\n
President Trump, in a jab at Biden, posted a short video on social media of one of the rambling anecdotes, without comment.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s choice of topic, Social Security, aimed to ramp up pressure on Trump over his rampaging government overhaul efforts.<\/p>\n
He highlighted staff reductions at the agency that Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have pushed as part of their \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency\u201d, saying the Social Security \u201cwebsite is crashing\u201d and hindering retirees from getting their benefits.<\/p>\n
The programme, which more than 65 million Americans rely on, is colloquially known in Washington as the \u201cthird rail of politics\u201d for its sensitivity to voters.<\/p>\n
Many Americans \u201cliterally count on social security to buy food, just to get by\u201d, Biden said, and \u201cmany of these beneficiaries, it\u2019s their only income. If it were cut or taken away, it would be devastating, devastating for millions of people\u201d.<\/p>\n
He bashed Trump\u2019s commerce secretary, former hedge fund manager Howard Lutnick, over a recent remark in which he said \u201cfraudsters\u201d would complain about a missing check, but not his mother-in-law.<\/p>\n
Biden scoffed at that characterisation, saying, \u201cWhat about the 94-year-old mother living all by herself \u2014 who doesn\u2019t have a billionaire in the family?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former US president Joe Biden, in his first major speech since leaving the White House, railed on Tuesday against his successor Donald Trump\u2019s frenetic government overhaul, claiming the \u201chatchet\u201d effort put Americans\u2019 retirement benefits at risk. \u201cFewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage, and so much destruction \u2014 it\u2019s kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8224,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8222\/revisions\/8224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}