FACT CHECK: Former Senator John Sununu Led Efforts to Privatize Social Security
MANCHESTER, N.H. — When confronted with his well-documented record of leading efforts to privatize Social Security, Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidate for U.S. Senate, former Senator John Sununu, claimed, “It’s not privatization […] it wasn’t anything even remotely close to that.” However, as was reported, detailed, catalogued, and panned at the time, Sununu led efforts to privatize Social Security, which would enrich Wall Street while jeopardizing the guaranteed retirement benefits for tens of thousands of New Hampshire workers.
Chris Pappas offers New Hampshire voters a stark contrast to Sununu’s dangerous and costly record. He’s committed to shoring up and improving Social Security to ensure that current retirees and future generations can trust that their benefits will be there.
Get the facts below:
FACT: John Sununu led efforts to privatize Social Security.
- When he was last in the U.S. Senate, Chris Pappas’s Trump-endorsed opponent John Sununu repeatedly introduced legislation to privatize Social Security that would have exposed Granite Staters’ retirement savings to stock market crashes and increased profits for Wall Street firms.
- As a “leading figure in the effort” to privatize Social Security, Sununu co-sponsored legislation that had been projected to accelerate the timeline of Social Security’s insolvency.
- Sununu supports Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that has sped up Social Security’s insolvency timeline, threatening the benefits that hundreds of thousands of Granite Staters rely on.
- Trump’s own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, characterized a provision in the bill as a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
- Just this month, John Sununu touted his plan to privatize Social Security on a local TV station while refusing to answer whether he still supports privatizing Social Security.
FACT: Sununu called for increasing the retirement age — a cut to guaranteed benefits — and his plan would have put guaranteed benefits at risk.
- Sununu told the Concord Monitor, “the retirement age must be gradually increased over time,” a de facto cut to guaranteed benefits after a lifetime of hard work.
- Analysts from the Economic Policy Institute, the Century Foundation, and the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned Sununu’s proposals would inevitably reduce benefits.
- The Economic Policy Institute described required “clawbacks” in the Sununu-backed Bush privatization plan as “substantial benefit cuts,” and AARP, APWU, and other advocates noted that workers could lose up to 15 cents of every dollar to fees charged by private money managers.
- CAP found that a retiree with a private account under Sununu’s plan who left the workforce during the 2008 financial crash “would have lost approximately $26,000” after 35 years of contributions.
FACT: Chris Pappas will never vote to cut benefits or move the goalposts for our seniors.
- Pappas led House and Senate Democrats in a letter demanding the Republican majority in Washington commit to protecting social security.
- Pappas cosponsored the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act, which restored full retirement benefits for teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public servants.
- Pappas fought against the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut the Social Security Administration, fire staff, and close field offices, including an office in Littleton, New Hampshire.
- Pappas opposed Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, which included a provision Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised as being a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
- Pappas’s campaign for U.S. Senate has been endorsed by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare PAC, a leading national organization dedicated to protecting Social Security and Medicare.
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