Five Questions to Ask at the Trump-Harris Debate

September 7, 2024

By Jim Towey

I expect viewership of this week’s presidential debate will be, well, “yuge.” Forget the polls that say that very few “undecideds” remain. My sense is that many people aren’t comfortable with their choice. This may be the election where some voters can’t bring themselves to vote for either candidate, if at all.  That is a sad but real possibility. The debate could change that.

Americans are, by nature, aspirational people. We believe it is our destiny that no war, depression, or internal division can interrupt our march toward a brighter future. A recent Quinnipiac poll said as much. And so, we will tune in Tuesday looking for what takes place on the big stage to surprise and inspire us.

Aging with Dignity’s mission is to safeguard and promote the God-given dignity and rights of the elderly poor, disabled, mentally ill and those near death – the people who often seem to count for little in the eyes of the elite. If I were the moderator for the presidential debate, here are the five questions that I would ask on their behalf:

Social Security and Medicare:  One in six Americans is over 65 years of age and the overwhelming majority receive Social Security and Medicare benefits. Every serious study of the trust funds concludes that both programs’ cash reserves hit zero in about a decade. The Harris campaign promises “Medicare for All” which would dramatically expand the program and change how it is financed; the campaign’s website is silent on Social Security reform. The Trump campaign website promises no cuts to either program and is silent on future financing. For approximately 10 million Americans, their monthly Social Security check is 90% of their income.

How do you propose to maintain solvency in Social Security and Medicare?

Pandemic: Both of you were in the White House when the American people were repeatedly lied to about Covid. The frail elderly paid a huge price for the policies that isolated and failed them. We now know that both the death toll and effectiveness of masking and social distancing were intentionally overstated to frighten the public into vaccinating; that it was never a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”; that the locking down of society and the closing of schools were unnecessary and not the prudent, “science-based” interventions that they pretended to be. We also now know the virus itself almost certainly came from the Wuhan, China lab where immoral “gain-of-function” research was conducted, despite all of the administration protestations to the contrary. And recently, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted that the White House did, in fact, coerce his and other social media outlets to censor dissent and suppress the dissemination of the aforementioned truths.

How will you restore confidence in the badly-discredited U.S. public health agencies? What will you do differently the next time a deadly virus finds its way from an obscure foreign laboratory to our nation’s shores? 

National Debt: During your time in the White House, both of you ran up budget deficits at breathtaking paces. Your administrations had their justifications, but the cumulative effect of these increases portends economic calamity for future generations. Right now, the total U.S. debt amounts to over $35 trillion, and America will squander nearly $1 trillion this year on interest payments to pay for past spending binges. Meanwhile, the size of the federal government continues to grow, adding to the deficits.

What will you do to rein in spending and government bloat?

Assisted Suicide: Canada is pushing the elderly, those with mental or chronic illness, and people with disabilities toward assisted suicide. Instead of offering services to the suffering, Canada chooses to hasten the death of the sufferers. In just seven years, there has been a 15-fold increase in the number of assisted suicides at our northern border.  

Do you support the legalization of assisted suicide?

Artificial Intelligence: There is a proverb that “fish see the worm, not the hook.”  As artificial intelligence continues its march into our lives and risks dehumanizing the world, both of your campaigns are silent on the dangers this poses to those who aren’t tech savvy. Elderly victims of scamming schemes are legion and in many cases have lost their life savings.  Social Security’s anti-fraud division is overwhelmed and is part of a giant bureaucracy. As ChatGPT and its progeny improve their fakery, this situation will only worsen.

How will you fight Big Tech and protect the vulnerable from AI’s excesses?

My guess is none of these questions will make it to the stage. But sit back, pass the popcorn, and pray that our low expectations for the two candidates will be surpassed by unexpected displays of civility, honesty, and substantive discourse. One can dream!

(The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)