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TV Spots Remind Rep. Cantor's Constituents about His Social Security "Cannot Exist" Remarks
The Campaign for America's Future is releasing a new ad to be aired starting April 8, in Rep. Eric Cantor's congressional district in Virginia, highlighting Cantor's comments that Social Security "cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be."
WASHINGTON
The Campaign for America's Future is releasing a new ad to be aired starting April 8, in Rep. Eric Cantor's congressional district in Virginia, highlighting Cantor's comments that Social Security "cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be."
Watch the ad here: (and see a transcript of the ad below): https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2MQID6sV6m0
The initial buy includes: Richmond, Charlottesville, Culpeper, and Winchester, VA.
Campaign for America's Future plans to raise money for more ads in Rep. Cantor's district and has set up a page for people to see the ad and contribute to the buy, at this link: https://caf.democracyinaction.org/o/11002/donate_page/fightcantor
Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America's Future said, "Social Security enjoys broad support among Americans of all ages because it is a reasonable and fair program designed to help those that need it most: the elderly and the disabled. In most cases, these are folks who have worked hard for many years and deserve the modest benefits Social Security has promised them. Rep. Cantor's constituents need to know that the America he envisions includes draconian cuts to Social Security. Through this ad, the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia will be able to hear Rep. Cantor talk about Social Security in his own words." Hickey noted that the audio in the TV spot was recorded from Rep. Cantor's remarks to the conservative Hoover Institution, as reported by National Public Radio.
Virginia Organizing Board Member and Social Security activist Jay Johnson said, "Seniors have paid into Social Security our whole lives and resent Rep. Cantor's assertion that Social Security is an entitlement. Social Security is a promise made to Americans that should not be broken by Rep. Cantor or any member of Congress. Rep. Cantor is messing with a viable part of his electorate. He has awakened a sleeping giant."
Hickey noted that 16.4 percent of the population of the 7th district of Virginia received Social Security benefits in 2009. That's 119,949 of Rep Cantor's constituents. That includes 81,332 retirees, and 14,812 disabled Virginians.
Transcript: CANTOR "CANNOT EXIST" 30 SECOND TV SPOT
NARRATOR: Congressman Eric Cantor wants to eliminate Social Security.
ON SCREEN: PHOTO, CONGRESSMAN CANTOR
TEXT: Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) wants to eliminate Social Security.
Speaking at the Hoover Institution, March 21, 2011
CANTOR AUDIO: Fifty percent of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we've got to protect today's seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we're going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.
NARRATOR: Tell Eric Cantor: We want America to protect Social Security.
ON SCREEN: Tell Congressman Cantor:
We want America to protect Social Security.
Call: 202-225-2815
Sponsored by Campaign for America's Future
OurFuture.org
For more information here is a fact sheet on Virginia and Social Security: https://strengthensocialsecurity.org/sites/default/files/Social-Security-...
The Campaign for America's Future is the strategy center for the progressive movement. Our goal is to forge the enduring progressive majority needed to realize the America of shared prosperity and equal opportunity that our country was meant to be.
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The Trump administration is quietly pursuing a regulatory change that would strip federal nutrition assistance from an estimated 6 million low-income Americans—including nearly two million children—as it spends billions on an illegal, open-ended war on Iran that has killed more than a thousand people and plunged the global economy into chaos.
The change sought by the US Department of Agriculture would curb broad-based categorical eligibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to automatically qualify residents for SNAP if they are already enrolled in other aid programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, thus reducing administrative hurdles and costs.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated in a blog post published late last month—the day before President Donald Trump announced the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran—that gutting broad-based categorical eligibility would likely strip modest federal food aid from around 6 million people, including nearly 2 million children.
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The Congressional Budget Office has projected that restricting broad-based categorical eligibility would result in roughly $11 billion in savings over a 10-year period—or just over $1 billion a year.
The Trump administration is currently spending around $1 billion per day in US taxpayer money waging war on Iran—a price tag that would be enough to cover the daily costs of SNAP benefits for the more than 40 million Americans on the program.
Over just the first two days of the military onslaught, the Pentagon "burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions," according to figures reported late Monday by the Washington Post.
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During Trump's first White House term, his administration proposed a rule that would have curtailed states' option to use broad-based categorical eligibility for SNAP, but the rule was never finalized and the Biden administration later rescinded it.
The Trump Agriculture Department revived the effort late last year, submitting a rule purportedly aimed at ensuring that "categorical eligibility is extended only to households that have sufficiently demonstrated eligibility."
"The end result," CBPP's Katie Bergh recently warned, "will be more hunger and hardship."
The Trump administration's new push comes months after the president signed into law the largest SNAP cuts in US history—around $187 billion over the next decade.
Trump bragged about the cuts during his State of the Union address last month, declaring that his administration has "lifted 2.4 million Americans" off SNAP—a euphemistic description of kicking people off the critical anti-poverty program.
Last week, Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee advanced a farm bill that would do nothing to mitigate the reverberating impacts of the Trump-GOP SNAP cuts.
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Immigrant rights advocates on Monday hailed a federal judge's ruling that blocked significant portions of President Donald Trump's proposed policy changes regarding the Board of Immigration Appeals, which had been scheduled to go into effect this week and would have "eviscerated noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases," according to rights groups.
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Moss said the administration had violated the legal requirement for the government to notify the public of its proposed changes to a federal rule and provide an opportunity for public comment. The Trump administration could potentially try again to change the immigration appeals process.
Laura St. John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, said the ruling "keeps in place a basic, yet critical, protection for immigrants facing removal: the ability to appeal their case."
"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated, all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."
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The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is one of several groups that sued the administration over the proposed rule, with Democracy Forward, the American Immigration Council, and the National Immigrant Justice Center representing the plaintiffs.
St. John argued in court that it can take at least a week for advocacy groups to prepare materials and file an appeal to the BIA after it has determined a noncitizen can be deported. Forcing immigrants and their legal teams to file an appeal within 10 days would leave many without any "meaningful review" of their cases, St. John said.
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Reuveni is a former Department of Justice lawyer who revealed in a whistleblower complaint last year that DOJ staffers had been advised by the Trump administration to ignore court orders in order to swiftly carry out Trump's mass deportation agenda.
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Moss' ruling came less than a month after US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in the Central District of California threw out a BIA decision that endorsed the administration's policy of denying bond hearings to immigrants with no criminal records who have been detained. A federal appeals court issued a temporary pause on that ruling last Friday after the White House appealed.
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"This is a war against the people of Iran."
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US and Israeli forces carried out a fresh wave of missile strikes on Iran late Monday and early Tuesday—reportedly hitting residential buildings, at least one school, and electricity infrastructure—as President Donald Trump threatened not just Iranian leaders but the nation's entire population with "death, fire, and fury."
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the US would "take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again" if the Iranian government impedes oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which has slowed to a trickle since the start of the joint US-Israeli assault.
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🚨NEW: Devastating U.S.–Israeli strikes on a residential complex in eastern Tehran late Monday killed about 40 people, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
The attack struck apartment blocks near Resalat Square, a densely populated area of the capital, the Iranian… https://t.co/nCAbyVy4L9 pic.twitter.com/Tpb1kXS4eN
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 10, 2026
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