Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton suggested he would support cuts to federal benefits programs during a private fundraiser with Washington lobbyists last month, according to an audio recording obtained by the Texas Tribune, the fourth leaked clip from the Sept. 24 event.
In response to a question about reducing the federal deficit, Paxton said: “Making reasonable cuts in mandatory spending – you’re going to have to do that. Or there’s no solution. That’s just the reality. We have to aspire.”
About three-quarters of mandatory federal spending went to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the last fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Much of the rest involved aid for low-income families, such as food benefits and unemployment insurance, as well as a mix of retirement and disability benefits for federal workers and veterans.
Paxton added: “From Republican presidents to Democrats, we have spent like crazy and no one seems to care. It’s going to bankrupt us. It’s just a matter of time.” He did not specify which programs he would seek to slash, or to what extent, in the audio excerpt obtained by the Tribune.
His campaign did not provide comment or answer questions about which benefit programs he would target.
The audio clip of the fundraiser was recorded by an attendee who opposes Paxton during his Senate campaign against Democrat James Talarico. Two other people in attendance confirmed details of the conversation and said they did not recall Paxton detailing what cuts he would support at any other point during the event.
Parts of Paxton’s remarks have been leaked successively to the New York Times, Politico and Axios since last week, in the final days before early voting. The person who recorded it declined to share the entire conversation. It is unclear how many additional leaks could occur.
Notably, Paxton’s comments during the meeting offer insight into how he would approach the deficit and looming benefits cliff facing Congress and the White House, with Social Security and Medicare reserve funds expected to run out in less than a decade. He rarely discussed his position on social rights during the election campaign.
The deficit, meanwhile, exceeded $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2025.
“There is no doubt that we need to reduce some mandatory spending,” Paxton said in the recording. “The numbers don’t add up. And then, on the other hand, we need to create a tax policy that encourages more spending and more production in our economy.”
After Paxton explained her two-pronged approach to reducing the deficit – tax cuts to stimulate the economy coupled with “reasonable reductions in mandatory spending” – a lobbyist in the room, Jeanne Haggerty, said she wanted a personal tax cut, drawing laughter from the room.
“I would really like to pay my fair share of taxes, which is less than what I pay now,” Haggerty said in the recording.
Paxton responded, “I’m with you on that.”
Two attendees said they remembered Haggerty’s remarks and the laughter from the room. Haggerty did not respond to a request for comment.
Talarico has consistently led Paxton in public polls about the race. Democrats haven’t won statewide in Texas since 1994, and national Republicans have unleashed a massive outside spending campaign to pushing Paxton across the finish line in what has become Texas’ most competitive cycle in decades. Early voting begins October 19.
Politicians in both parties have tiptoed around entitlement reforms, fearing a backlash from voters who would feel they were cutting benefits that millions of older Americans depend on and have spent years paying into. Republicans have been more willing to cut Medicaid, with President Donald Trump’s sweeping 2025 tax and spending bill, which he dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, cutting federal Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
On the campaign trail, Paxton proposed a series of tax deductions for health, housing and family-related expenses. In an audio recording of the same event published Wednesday by Axios, Paxton walks through those proposals in response to questions about cost-of-living concerns fueled by the war in Iran that he called “dragging” for his campaign.
Last summer, after Congress passed Trump’s megabill, Paxton celebrated it as “HISTORIC legislation that will unleash economic growth and help deport the millions of illegal aliens who have destroyed our country.”
“This is an incredible moment for the future of our nation,” he wrote. “AMERICA FIRST!” »
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the law will leave 10 million more people without health insurance by 2034, while adding at least $3.4 trillion to the national deficit.
In June, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans were considering overhauling welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, saying they “need to be adjusted and fixed” to help reduce the debt.
Democrats seized on his comments and presented them as a promise that Republicans would cut Social Security and other benefit programs. Johnson later posted on social media that Republicans are “not talking about cutting a single benefit” but would instead focus on “eliminating hundreds of billions of FRAUDs and inefficiencies that deplete programs and threaten their sustainability.”
The September 24 meeting was organized by Susan Hirschmann and Chris Brinson of Williams & Jensen, a Washington-based lobbying firm, on Capitol Hill. About a dozen people, mostly lobbyists, took part. An invitation for the event described it as a luncheon with Paxton for which “donations are welcome but are not required to attend.”
Hirschmann and Brinson did not respond to requests for comment.
The first leaked audio recording of the meeting was published last week by The New York Times, in which Paxton told attendees that Trump’s midterm convention had hurt his campaign.
In another clip released Monday by Politico, Paxton, who positioned himself as a Washington outsider throughout his primary campaign, lamented Washington’s influence on his race, saying, “I’ve never been in a race where I felt less in control of the campaign…it all comes from – you know – Washington DC.”
Nick Maddux, a senior adviser to Paxton’s campaign, called the Times article “manipulated nonsense” and told Politico that the attorney general was referring to super PACs, which are prohibited from coordinating campaigns with under federal law.
Since early September, super PACs aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Trump have spent more than $150 million on ads for Paxton, who has spent $20 million from his own campaign coffers during that period, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. Talarico, meanwhile, had spent $40 million on airtime.
Disclosure: The New York Times has been a major financial supporter of the Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that is funded in part by donations from its members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial support plays no role in our journalism. Find a full list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.
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