David McCormick, a Republican candidate for a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat, tours the Lackawanna College of Petroleum and Natural Gas in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McCormick said at a meet and greet in March he would not propose immediate changes to Medicare and Social Security. But he built up his government portfolio by pushing for privatizing them.

The former CEO of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund worked as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under then-President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009. During that time, one of Bush’s biggest domestic priorities was a plan to allow workers to send portions of their Social Security payments into private savings accounts rather than the public entitlement program. In Bush’s 2007 State of the Union speech, he urged Congress to “take on the challenge of entitlements” like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

During a September 2007 speech at Peking University in Beijing, then-Under Secretary McCormick praised the Bush administration’s push to privatize entitlement programs.

“To meet this challenge, we are committed to continuing to improve our fiscal outlook, particularly through measures to address the challenge of entitlement spending reform,” McCormick said. “We have already taken steps to increase incentives for private saving through tax reforms affecting capital income, and we are striving to broaden these tax reforms to further boost personal saving.”

In 2004, NBC News found that Bush’s Social Security plan would bring in anywhere between $39 billion and $279 billion in management fees for Wall Street brokers and mutual fund companies over 75 years. The Los Angeles Times came to the same conclusion in 2005, although they noted that some in the financial industry avoided talking about the plan to not draw public scorn over entitlements being at the whim of market forces.

One Wall Street institution that would benefit from an influx of new privatized Social Security accounts — with lower returns than Social Security and greater risk — is Goldman Sachs. Dozens of the investment bank’s executives donated up to a combined $220,000 in personal donations to McCormick’s Senate campaign, according to a Bloomberg report from last month. Dave McCormick is also married to a Goldman Sachs partner, Dina Powell McCormick.

Although he doesn’t explicitly say he would make cuts or switch to privatization, McCormick continues to push the same message about entitlement changes as a Senate candidate 15 years later. At the March meet and greet, he said entitlement programs should not change for “anyone in this room that’s got gray hair” that were promised the entitlements, but he would make cuts in at least Social Security as a senator.

“I think as a matter of reality, those entitlements aren’t sustainable in their current form for the future of our country,” McCormick said in an audio clip published by American Bridge. “I don’t think my kids are going to be able to live under the same entitlements that all of us that are here. So, I think we have to face that reality and do two things at the same time: keep our promises to people we made them to and change our entitlements in a way that they’re defensible and fundable into the future.”

McCormick’s Wall Street ties and business dealings with China have garnered scorn from both Democrats and Republicans, including from fellow Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz.

“David McCormick made a fortune on his ties to China and by outsourcing American jobs,” said Jack Doyle, Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesperson, in a statement responding to a report by The Daily Beast. “Now he wants to target programs like Social Security and Medicare while securing tax breaks for the wealthy and giant corporations. McCormick has made it clear that he will sell out hard working families to help himself whenever he can – and that’s why he can’t be trusted to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate.”