Did Mike Collins tell older Americans to ‘get off of Social Security’? Ossoff’s ad omits context

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is seeking to retain his Georgia seat, has been airing TV ads aimed at older Americans that say his Republican opponent U.S. Rep. Mike Collins wants to cut their retirement benefits.

“Georgia Congressman Mike Collins voted to gut Social Security, and Mike Collins says he wants to push you off Social Security and back to work,” the narrator in a Sept. 2 ad says before an audio clip of Collins’ voice airs.

“‘Get off of Social Security. Get, get back into the workforce,’” Collins’ voice says before the ad’s narrator returns with a warning: “Mike Collins is attacking your retirement.”

Ossoff’s campaign also used the Collins audio clip in an Aug. 7 TV ad making the same claim. Both ads show images of older people before pivoting to Collins’ voice.

But Collins didn’t say he wants to “push” older people off Social Security.

Ossoff’s ads used a partial quote from Collins’ comments during a 2025 radio interview. Collins’ full comments during the interview make it clear he was not talking about putting older Americans back to work. 

In June 2025, Collins told Atlanta FM radio station XTRA 106.3 that Congress under Trump is focusing on cutting spending and lowering the country’s deficit. Collins said cutting taxes and regulations would bring companies back to the U.S., adding taxpayers and revenue. 

“It’s just Business 101,” Collins said in that interview. “You know, you’ve got spending and you’ve got revenue, and you set it up to where you can increase your revenue, and you do that by lowering taxes and making it more advantageous for people to work and to get off of Medicaid, get off of Social Security, get back into the workforce.”

Although the Ossoff ad focuses on older people, they are not the only ones who receive Social Security benefits. The majority of people receiving them are older Americans. But Social Security also pays benefits to spouses and children of retired workers, widows, children of deceased workers, disabled workers and their spouses and children. 

A spokesperson for Ossoff’s campaign defended the ads’ use of the audio, saying Collins provided no clarification or context about the statement either during the radio interview or later.

Collins’ full comments make it clear he was advocating for the U.S. to make it more advantageous for people to work by lowering taxes. He wasn’t instructing people to get off Medicaid and Social Security, as the ad makes it sound. 

“He was not talking about taking earned Social Security retirement benefits away from seniors,” Collins’ campaign spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said.

Siegfried said Collins has never supported “pushing” older Americans off Social Security, and that Ossoff’s ads cherry-picked a few words from a broader discussion about workforce participation and government assistance. 

“Rep. Collins believes seniors who spent their lives paying into Social Security should receive the benefits they earned,” Siegfried said. 

Did Collins vote to ‘gut’ Social Security?

Although Collins has voted in favor of legislation that could decrease Social Security benefits, the word “gut” is an exaggeration.

As evidence for the claim, one of the ads referred to a March 18 AFL-CIO letter against House Joint Resolution 139. That resolution proposed a constitutional amendment seeking to balance the federal budget, and the labor union argued that this attempt would have resulted in massive cuts to programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Collins voted in favor of the resolution, but it didn’t pass the House.

The resolution didn’t provide any exceptions for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and it required two-thirds approval of both chambers of Congress to raise or implement new tax rates.

As evidence for the statement that Collins voted to “gut” Social Security, Ossoff’s campaign also pointed PolitiFact to Collins’ vote in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. As PolitiFact previously reported, the fiscally hawkish Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in 2025 warned the law would reduce Social Security tax revenues by $30 billion per year. That means the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted in 2032 rather than in 2033, as the Social Security Board of Trustees’ 2025 annual report had projected. 

Ossoff’s campaign also pointed PolitiFact to Collins’ 2014 House campaign plan and noted he is a member of the Republican Study Committee; the plan and the committee have proposed gradually increasing the retirement age.

Raising the retirement age means people who retire before the proposed cutoff would receive smaller benefits, and people who opt to wait for full benefits will have to retire later. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities policy experts reported in 2023 that raising Social Security’s full retirement age would cut benefits for new retirees.

Our ruling

In two TV ads, Ossoff’s campaign said Collins “voted to gut Social Security” and “wants to push (older Americans) off Social Security and back to work.”

The ads take a clip from longer remarks by Collins and omit the context. He did not address older people’s retirement benefits or tell them to get off Social Security and get a job. 

Although the Ossoff ad focuses on older people, Social Security benefits are not exclusive to retirees; spouses and children of retired workers, widows, children of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their dependents also receive them. 

Collins supported a resolution and the Big Beautiful Bill Act that experts warned could eventually cut Social Security benefits for some, but he has not gone so far as to vote to fully “gut” the program. 

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate this claim Mostly False.