Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren offered a preview Monday of how Democrats plan to attack J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator who Donald Trump just tapped as his running mate.
Warren, who is a member of the Biden-Harris 2024 National Advisory Board, was the only elected official in a campaign call conducted shortly after Trump announced his pick. In her remarks, she focused on Vance’s economic stances, warning that he would target policies that benefit a wide swath of voters in order to provide tax cuts to the very wealthiest Americans.
“Billionaires on Wall Street and Silicon Valley are cheering, but there is no joy for working people,” Warren said of Vance’s selection.
Warren predicted that, as Trump’s partner, Vance would back cuts to Social Security and Medicare, citing a 2010 blog post in which Vance called benefits from those programs “the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.”
“With Trump-Vance, Social Security and Medicare cuts will bear down on seniors like an avalanche,” Warren warned.
In his 2022 Senate campaign, Vance told HuffPost that he no longer supports cutting or privatizing Social Security or cutting Medicare.
Warren also accused Vance of “think[ing] sick people should pay more,” citing a 2017 New York Times op-ed in which he discussed repealing the Affordable Care Act, and of opposing federal infrastructure investments, referencing a 2022 interview in which he called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act a “huge, huge mistake.”
“Trump and Vance support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, and money that goes into roads and bridges, all to pay for a $3.5 million annual tax cut for billionaires,” Warren said.
In the aforementioned Times op-ed, Vance endorsed repealing the ACA, but also cautioned that Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would leave “millions…unable to pay for basic health care.”
In his 2022 criticism of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Vance said not enough of the act’s $1.3 billion in spending was targeted toward actual infrastructure improvements.
Other participants in the call highlighted what they characterized as Vance’s extreme track record on abortion. Among other things, Vance has previously backed a “ national standard” for when abortions can be permitted and suggested that exceptions should not be granted for rape or incest.
Warren previously worked with Vance on bipartisan legislation that would allow federal regulators to claw back up to three years of compensation from the leaders of failed big banks. In 2023, Politico quoted Warren saying Vance had been “terrific to work with” on that issue.
Warren did not discuss her past collaboration with Vance in Monday’s campaign call, and her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from GBH News.
