During the 2020 Democratic primary, Joe Biden had to answer for his repeated attempts to work with Republicans to try to cut Social Security benefits. Biden responded by pretending he never tried to cut the program, and by insisting he would try to expand it as president. This prompted some of his defenders to wonder why Social Security was even an issue, when presumably the Democratic Party and Donald Trump himself have publicly insisted they would never dream of trying to slash one of the most popular social programs in history.

Fast forward to the present and you will now understand why Social Security continues to be a huge point of contention: it’s because some powerful people in the Democratic Party still do dream of normalizing the idea of cutting Social Security, and those folks are now getting a boost from Donald Trump’s administration.

This sordid, little cautionary tale started last week. As lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Kamala Harris were unveiling a proposal to give workers a $2,000 stipend during the coronavirus crisis, University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin countered with a research paper pushing an alternate idea: “Allowing workers to tap their Social Security wealth to finance consumption today.”