Roger Williams Social Security

Roger Williams Says 'Trump Accounts' Can Save Social Security. That's a Backdoor to Privatizing It.

On Newsmax, Rep. Roger Williams pitched 'Trump Accounts' as a way to save Social Security. But even the plan's own author admits they're really about privatizing it — and that puts a guaranteed check for millions of Texans at risk.

MAGA Report Cards · Jul 11, 2026

Roger Williams Says 'Trump Accounts' Can Save Social Security. That's a Backdoor to Privatizing It.

On Thursday, July 9, Texas Rep. Roger Williams went on Newsmax's "Wake Up America" and floated a big idea: the new "Trump Accounts" could help fix Social Security.

Asked whether the accounts could help with Social Security's "looming insolvency," Williams answered, "I think it certainly can."

"If we let people own their own accounts and spend their own money, I think you're going to see a lot of investment rather than going elsewhere," he said. "But we have to have a backup. ... This certainly is a backup that includes all the people, not just a few."

It sounds friendly. Who doesn't want people to build wealth? But strip away the sales pitch and here's what Williams is really talking about: taking a program that guarantees you a check for life and swapping it for a stock-market account that doesn't. That's not saving Social Security. That's the first step toward getting rid of it.

What is a "Trump Account"?

Trump Accounts are savings accounts for kids, created in Trump's 2025 tax law. Each child gets a $1,000 deposit from the government, and parents or others can add up to $5,000 a year. The money gets invested and grows until the child is an adult.

That's it. It's a starter investment account for a baby. It does nothing to pay the Social Security benefits your grandmother is collecting right now, and it does nothing to close the funding gap the program is facing. Williams is pitching a piggy bank for newborns as the answer to a retirement crisis for seniors.

Even the plan's author admits the real goal

Here's the part Williams left out on TV. The people who dreamed up Trump Accounts have already said out loud what they're for.

Sen. Ted Cruz — a fellow Texas Republican and the man who first proposed the idea — spelled it out at a conference this year. "Here's the dirty little secret. Trump accounts are Social Security personal accounts," Cruz told the audience. His plan: start the accounts at birth, let them grow for decades, and eventually tell parents they can divert their own payroll taxes into private accounts too.

Trump's own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said the same thing even more plainly, calling the accounts "a backdoor for privatizing Social Security." (After Democrats jumped on the comment, Bessent walked it back and said the accounts were only meant to add to Social Security, not replace it.)

So when Williams says these accounts let people "own their own accounts and spend their own money" instead of "going elsewhere," he's describing exactly the plan Cruz and Bessent laid out — replacing a guaranteed government benefit with a private, market-based one. Privatizing Social Security is an old Republican dream. President George W. Bush tried it in 2005 and failed. Trump Accounts are the same idea wearing a new costume, starting with babies instead of workers.

Who gets hurt when you put Social Security in the stock market

Williams says a private account "includes all the people, not just a few." The opposite is true. Social Security is the program that already includes everyone — and the people it protects most are exactly the ones a stock-market plan would leave exposed.

Social Security is the guaranteed part of retirement. It's a check for life, adjusted for inflation, with almost no fees. A private account is only worth whatever the market says on the day you cash out. If the market crashes right before you retire, that's your problem — not the government's.
For the poorest 20% of seniors, Social Security is about 79% of their income. Half of women 65 and older would fall below the poverty line without it.
Wall Street money managers charge fees on private accounts — fees that quietly eat away at savings, and hit low-income people hardest.

The real threat to Social Security isn't that people can't gamble their retirement on the stock market. It's that Congress keeps refusing to shore up the program's finances. Government projections say that if lawmakers do nothing, Social Security will hit a shortfall around late 2032 and benefits would automatically be cut to about 78 cents on the dollar — a roughly 22% cut. That would cost the average retiree several hundred dollars a month.

Williams didn't offer a plan to stop that cut. He offered a baby account and a pitch for privatization.

"Own your own money" — unless it's Roger Williams

Williams loves the language of self-reliance. On Newsmax he said the accounts would "teach them the value of a dollar, the value of money, which we're not teaching in our schools right now." He's built a whole brand on the idea that people should stand on their own instead of leaning on government.

Except when it's him.

Williams, a former car dealer, once scoffed that "a socialist wants you to get a check from the government... a capitalist wants you to get a check from the place that you work." Then his own Weatherford car dealership took a $1.43 million Paycheck Protection Program loan — a government check — that was later forgiven. And when the House voted on a bill to make PPP recipients public, Williams voted no — to keep that money hidden.

That's the pattern. Government help is "socialism" when it's a Social Security check for a retiree, but it's just good business when it's a seven-figure loan for his dealership. He wants seniors to trust the market with their retirement while he takes the sure thing for himself.

Follow the money

There's another reason to be skeptical of Williams cheering on a plan to move retirement savings into private accounts: look at who funds him. His top donors read like a list of the banks and financial firms that stand to profit when Americans are pushed to invest privately instead of relying on a government program — the American Bankers Association, Ally Financial, Citizens First Bank, and more. Williams sits on the House Financial Services Committee, the panel that oversees exactly that industry.

Privatizing Social Security is a windfall for Wall Street and a gamble for everyone else. Williams is on the side taking the fee.

The bottom line

Social Security is facing a real deadline, and the people of Texas's 25th District deserve a representative with a real plan to protect it. What they got instead was a TV hit where Roger Williams repackaged a scheme to privatize the program — one his own party's leaders have openly admitted is the goal — and sold it as a rescue.

A guaranteed check for life is not something you "back up" with a stock account. It's the thing that keeps millions of seniors out of poverty. Williams should be fighting to strengthen it. Instead, he's helping lay the groundwork to hand it to Wall Street.