Many top Republicans are tiptoeing on the issue of entitlements reform as Social Security and Medicare inch toward insolvency, refusing to allow President Joe Biden to use it as an attack point.
But former South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley, currently running third or fourth in the latest polls, was not afraid to go there Saturday to Newsmax.
"Yes, we do have to talk about entitlement reform," Haley told "Saturday Agenda" from the Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst's "Roast and Ride" event in Des Moines, Iowa. "But we don't take away from those who've been promised. We don't take away from those that put money in."
Despite it being an issue in France that led to massive violent protests, raising the retirement age for the next generation of Americans has to be put on the table, Haley told host Kilmeny Duchardt.
"We look at those like my kids in their 20s, and we go to them and we say, 'To you, we're going to raise the retirement age, so it reflects life expectancy,'" Haley said.
"We're going to limit benefits on the wealthy. We're going to expand Medicare advantage plans. That's how we'll go and we'll pay down debt."
Haley, the lone Republican woman in the field thus far, pitched her presidential primary candidacy on being an accountant needed to handle the country's financial problems.
"I'm not a lawyer, I'm an accountant, and it's time that we actually put an accountant in the White House so that we can start treating taxpayer dollars the way they deserve to be treated," she said. "They're spending it like it's funny money and it's not. It's our money, and we deserve to know that we're not leaving a terrible debt and economy to our children.
"Our kids are never going to forgive us for this. That's why I'm going to make sure we go and we put an end to it."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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