Top 2026 NH GOP Senate candidates back ‘backdoor for privatizing Social Security’

On Thursday, Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, ushering in the United States’ first national social insurance and safety-net system.

Ninety years later, the program looms larger than ever, both in terms of providing crucial financial security for seniors and in American politics writ large.

More than 334,100 Granite Staters receive Social Security benefits, and for over 122,100 families, those checks make up more than half of household income. As a result, the program’s popularity cuts across party lines.

In AARP’s 90th-anniversary national survey, 95% of Republicans, 98% of Democrats, and 93% of independents say Social Security is vital to Americans’ financial security.

Those numbers, and recent moves by members of the Trump administration to tamper with the program, help explain why the issue could be central in New Hampshire’s 2026 US Senate race. 

Ex-Massachusetts politician Scott Brown and  State Sen. Dan Innis,  the leading candidates in the GOP’s  2026 US Senate primary, have both supported President Donald Trump’s recently passed “Big Beautiful” budget package, which includes new “Trump accounts,” investment accounts for children born between 2025 and 2028.

Trump’s own Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, described those accounts as a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”

Neither Brown nor Innis has disavowed the program since those comments, nor did they disavow the comments themselves. In fact, Brown has gone even further in remarks made earlier this year.

‘“People don’t want their Social Security. They don’t care about that,” he said on radio program Contact Politics in February. 

During the interview, Brown alsorepeated misinformation about alleged Social Security fraud being perpetrated, suggesting that “hundreds of thousands” of individuals over 150 years old were receiving Social Security benefits, a lie popularized by Elon Musk during his time running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Innis has a longer paper trail when it comes to ideas that would change the structure of Social Security. During his 2014 congressional run, his “Innis Agenda” proposed letting workers “own their Social Security retirement benefits … in a secure account that could be invested much like a 401(k)” — language that mirrors long-running privatization proposals.

This summer, he cheered Trump’s budget package.

On the ground in New Hampshire, Social Security access has become a flashpoint.

Earlier this year, the Littleton Social Security field office appeared on a federal list of properties to be off-loaded as “not core to government operations,” alarming North Country residents who would face drives of 80–100 miles to Concord if in-person services were shifted. After pushback from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation, the government backed off an immediate sale, but concerns linger.

At the same time, Granite Staters have reported delayed or reduced payments and trouble getting through to the agency.

New Hampshire US Senator Maggie Hassan pressed the new Social Security commissioner for answers, citing “a significant increase” in complaints about late checks, suspended benefits, and difficulty reaching a live person. 

Democrats are drawing a policy contrast. Rep. Chris Pappas, the likely Democratic nominee for Senate, has framed his position as protecting, not privatizing Social Security. He has backed efforts to improve customer service and preserve benefits, and has opposed moves he says would weaken the program. His office has also highlighted bipartisan progress on related retiree fairness issues in the last Congress and has pressed the administration to keep local services accessible.

Republicans argue that market-style accounts can boost returns for younger workers and reduce long-term fiscal pressures. That’s the premise behind proposals like Innis’ 2014 plan and the new “Trump accounts.”

But policy experts have long said that shifting Social Security payroll taxes toward private investments dramatically increases risk, opens the door to benefit cuts, and undermines the guaranteed nature of the program — concerns that have animated the backlash in a state where many retirees rely on Social Security as their primary income source.