U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, and Republican Senate candidate David McCormick share concerns about the future of Social Security.

Beyond that, they don’t share many other opinions or views about the program.

“The first thing we have to do is to make sure that we don’t enact into law what a lot of Republicans in Washington have been preaching for years,” Casey said. “If you look at their proposals over the last decade … and they haven’t disavowed these, by the way … they’ve proposed privatizing Social Security, voucherizing Medicare and decimating the Medicaid program through massive cuts, the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

Casey called for a debate on his descriptions of Republican plans before coming together “in a bipartisan fashion to make sure that we have a foundation for Social Security to be sustainable.”

He criticized any effort to reduce benefits, saying they are “earned benefits.”

“This tax debate has a big impact on it,” Casey said. “We cannot allow a tax bill to be in place or a tax policy to be in place where you blow a hole $4.5 trillion in the federal debt.”

He described such an approach to taxes and the debt and deficits as “devastating.”

McCormick says Congress needs to rule out “not living up to its promises” on Social Security.

“People on Social Security are the ones that are getting hurt the most by the inflation, because they are on fixed income,” McCormick said.

“We can’t touch Social Security for our elders,” he said.

He blamed Social Security’s challenges on politicians – including Casey – “raiding” its trust fund.

“Part of the reason it’s not sustainable financially is that the Social Security account, which people paid into, has been raided by Washington senators like Bob Casey,” McCormick said. “If you look at the deficit under Casey, when he entered the Senate 18 years ago, it was $9 trillion. It’s now over $30 trillion today … It’s the out-of control spending across the board.”

McCormick said the federal government needs fiscal constraints.

“The best way to do that would be a balanced budget amendment,” he said. “Our interest payment today on our debt is $1 trillion. Our defense budget – the single most important responsibility of government is to protect us from foreign adversaries – is $900 billion. We spend more on paying the interest on our debt than we do on paying for our defense.”

One example of excessive spending McCormick cited – and said Casey supports – is the White House’s attempt at student loan forgiveness.

“Everyone in Williamsport is paying regardless of what their choices were, they’re paying for $160 billion – that’s more than our army’s budget – for student loan forgiveness. … That is unfair. It’s unAmerican.”