Republicans are on defense as Democrats point out that a lot of Republican economic plans boil down to cutting Social Security and Medicare. Lucky for Republicans, they have a lot of the media running interference for them, suggesting that Democrats’ warnings are overblown—just as the same media outlets spent years suggesting that Democrats’ warnings that Republicans wanted to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade were overblown.
But the reality remains: Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Along with passing a federal abortion ban and cutting off aid to Ukraine.
Republicans want to gut Social Security and Medicare. Flipping House seats is one of the best ways to stop them. Can you give $15?
RELATED STORY: What the GOP is threatening to do to Social Security and Medicare is not politics as usual
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy offered up some vague, misleading buzzwords in a recent Fox News appearance, saying, “Here’s a ‘Commitment to America,’ what does it say in there? ‘To save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare.’ This simply means we’re not touching it.”
Okay, Kevin, that’s what it says, but what do you mean by “strengthen”? That’s a kind of important detail, and most of the plans Republicans have offered have funny definitions.
McCarthy himself has announced his intention, if Republicans gain control of the House, to hold a debt ceiling increase hostage to spending cuts that could include Social Security and Medicare. Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Rick Scott have both said they’d require regular votes to keep Social Security and Medicare going at all. Scott wants those votes every five years. Johnson wants them every single year as part of the federal budget.
Just think for a minute about what it would look like if every year or even every five years, Republicans were able to hold the future of the vast majority of seniors hostage. Think about all of the government shutdowns and shutdown threats of recent years, and then imagine if Social Security and Medicare were on the line in each of those situations.
A June poll by Data for Progress found that 86% of people were very or somewhat concerned about the government reducing Social Security benefits for those that currently receive them. A large majority of people—79%—are also very or somewhat concerned about the government privatizing part of Social Security. That’s an idea Republicans have been bringing up for years and years—they made a serious push on it in 2005, under George W. Bush—and it’s in the current Republican Study Committee budget, endorsed by 158 House Republicans. That same Republican Study Committee budget would raise the retirement age and reduce benefits for higher-income retirees.
Proposals to increase Social Security benefits, make them rise with the cost of living, and improve the situation for widows and widowers and caregivers all do much, much better in polls than privatization. But when McCarthy says he wants to “save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare,” he’s not saying he wants to increase benefits or expand who can access full benefits. He’s admitting he wants to do something to the program while refusing to be explicit about what that is. But he’s told us enough that we know it’s going to be a hostage in a fight over the debt ceiling. Other Republicans have told us they want it to be held hostage even more often than that. A majority of House Republicans have endorsed privatization. Does Kevin McCarthy strike you as a guy who—even if he personally opposed privatizing Social Security—would stand up to his caucus and say no? Shoot, he can’t even reliably condemn his members for appearing at white nationalist events.
But attacks on Social Security and Medicare aren’t the only Republican plans. GOP leaders are trying to downplay Sen. Lindsey Graham’s 15-week federal abortion ban, but the reality is that before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, congressional Republicans had introduced a number of far more extreme federal abortion bans. They don’t want voters thinking about that, and for now, they know President Joe Biden would veto such bills, but the bills are written. They have demonstrated support from congressional Republicans. It’s not like they’ve disappeared from the face of the earth.
Then they want to slash the Inflation Reduction Act’s measures to improve tax enforcement. They’ll talk about the 87,000 IRS agents the law supposedly calls for, but really they’re most opposed to the idea of the IRS being able to collect money owed by wealthy tax cheats. Since the money the IRS is supposed to collect from those wealthy tax cheats is slated to go toward climate initiatives, targeting that funding wouldn’t just affect the IRS, it would affect the planet. So would Republican plans to boost fossil fuel production at the expense of clean energy.
Republicans have also pledged endless investigations of the Biden administration, seeking to create a scandal out of thin air. Hunter Biden may not be a government official, but that won’t stop them from investigating him as a way to way to cause problems for the president.
And if Republicans take the Senate, forget about getting any more judges confirmed.
It goes on and on and on. If Republicans take Congress, there’s a lot that President Biden wouldn’t sign. But that doesn’t mean they can’t take hostages and obstruct and harass and generally do damage to the nation—damage they would, in 2024, turn around and blame on Democrats.
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