GOP Plans To Gut Social Security and Medicare

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

10-15-2022
NEWS POLITICS & ELECTIONS

GOP Plans to Gut Social Security and Medicare
If It Retakes Control of Congress.

The Democratic chair of the congressional Joint Economic Committee warned Wednesday that the GOP’s plan to use a looming debt ceiling fight as leverage to secure cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be “economically catastrophic for seniors, families, and our entire economy.”

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in a statement after_____ House Republicans outlined their intentions in interviews with Bloomberg Government on Tuesday.__

“This announcement comes after a previous proposal from the leader of the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee to___
sunset Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ benefits in five years.”

Several House Republicans vying for the chairmanship of the chamber’s budget committee told Bloomberg that they view a debt ceiling clash —

Which is expected early next year as the Treasury Department reaches its arbitrary borrowing limit —
as an opportunity to pursue long-sought changes to Social Security and Medicare,
including benefit cuts and an increase in the retirement age.

“The debt limit is clearly one of those tools that Republicans — that a Republican-controlled Congress — will use,” said Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.)
who is currently the ranking member of the House Budget Committee.

“Republicans have let us in on their plans for Medicare and Social Security — raise the eligibility age and cut benefits. Seniors deserve better.”

Politico reported late last month that a number of Republican congressional candidates — including Arizona U.S. Senate nominee Blake Masters and New Hampshire U.S. Senate hopeful Don Bolduc —
have voiced support for cutting or privatizing Social Security and Medicare on the campaign trail in recent weeks.

“The privatization is hugely important,” Bolduc said of Medicare and Medicaid during an August town hall. “Getting government out of it, getting government money with strings attached out of it.”

The official policy agenda of House Republicans also leaves the door open to Medicare and Social Security cuts and privatization, as Common Dreams reported last month.

In key battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic candidates have seized on their GOP opponents’ attacks on traditional Medicare and Social Security and vowed to defend the programs from right-wing attacks.

After incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an August radio interview that Congress “ought to turn everything into discretionary spending” and characterized mandatory Social Security and Medicare outlays as a “debt burden,” Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes warned that the GOP senator “wants to strip working people of the Social Security and Medicare they’ve earned.”

Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has issued similar warnings about his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has pledged to further privatize Medicare.

“We can never allow Social Security and Medicare to be weakened by the GOP,” Fetterman wrote in a recent Twitter post. “Dr. Oz would be another vote to take away these critical lifelines for our seniors.”

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

11-30-2022

High-Ranking Senate Republican Reveals GOP
Plan to Slash Social Security..

he GOP is preparing to use next year’s debt limit talks to potentially hold the economy hostage in order to slash crucial anti-poverty programs like Social Security, according to a new interview with the Senate’s second ranking Republican.

Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) said that slashing such programs would be a “solution” to the national debt — an issue that Republicans only bring up in regards to liberal or left-leaning proposals and programs.
Thune added that threatening a default, which would have catastrophic consequences for the economy and risk triggering a recession, could be a viable option for the party to force the cuts, Bloomberg reports.

Currently, the debt ceiling is slated to expire sometime
in the first quarter of 2023. House Republicans are on board with the plan; in October, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) also said that the party is planning to use the debt ceiling to push through Republican priorities like_
slashing Social Security and Medicare.

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be devastating for recipients and for the country at large.

Social Security is consistently the most effective program in the U.S. in cutting poverty, preventing tens of millions of people from falling into poverty each year.
Medicare and Medicaid are also crucial antipoverty measures, with tens of millions of people dependent on the programs for health care coverage.

Introducing cuts at a time when many people dependent on the programs are already struggling to survive could potentially cause millions more people to experience poverty, continue working far past typical retirement age just to afford basic needs, or be thrown into deep economic and personal instability due to lack of health care coverage.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has even openly admitted that
he thinks that retirees should be working.

Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have been pushing for Congress to expand Social Security, saying that the government could easily do so by ensuring that people with higher incomes pay their fair share into the program.

In order to avoid future conflicts over the debt ceiling — and halt Republicans’ welfare-cutting plan in its tracks — some progressive lawmakers and advocates have called for the abolition of the debt ceiling altogether.
The limit “serves no function except to create leverage for people who are willing to blow up the economy,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said earlier this month.

Never happen. No politician is going to tick off the largest voting bloc in America.

Posts : 2495 Join date : 2017-09-09

oliver clotheshoffe wrote:: Never happen. No politician is going to tick off the largest voting bloc in America.

Yea i call bullshit... I bet there's a thread around here someplace claiming the Trump admin was gonna do that...it sounds familiar ...was probably around the same time democrats were promising "medicare for all"...which they haven't so much as mentioned the past 2 years while they've had total control....and what kinda fukn RINO would go to the press and make that claim at this point?

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

12-23-2022

House GOP using Omnibus fight as 'trial run' for ploy
to cut Social Security and Medicare, critics warn.

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass
a $1.7 trillion government funding package on Friday to avert a partial shutdown, but not before hearing the vocal objections of far-right Republicans who have signaled their plans to pursue spending cuts—
specifically targeting Social Security and Medicare—
once they take control of the chamber next month.

Leading up to the Senate's vote Thursday to approve
the omnibus, dozens of House Republicans spearheaded by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas urged their colleagues in the upper chamber to
"use every tool possible to kill this bill," raising well-worn complaints about the national debt and threatening to do all they can to obstruct ordinary congressional business in the next session.

"If any omnibus passes in the remaining days of this Congress, we will oppose and whip opposition to any legislative priority of those senators who vote for its passage—including the Republican leader," Roy and 30 other House Republicans wrote in a letter to the Senate GOP on Wednesday.
"We will oppose any rule, any consent request, suspension voice vote, or roll call vote of any such Senate bill, and will otherwise do everything in our power to thwart even the smallest legislative and policy efforts of those senators."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who
is fighting to become the next speaker, has endorsed
the threat from the Republican group, which had hoped to delay work on the omnibus until the GOP assumed control of the House.

To progressive watchdogs, the House GOP's fervent campaign against the must-pass spending package offers a preview of how Republicans will wield their majority in the lower chamber to wreak havoc and pursue longstanding right-wing policy goals in 2023.

"MAGA extremists in Congress are dusting off an old conservative playbook for when they seize power—
using the deficit they created with irresponsible tax breaks for billionaires and greedy corporations as an excuse to gut Social Security and Medicare benefits for America's seniors and working people," said Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.US.

"The same MAGA Republicans feigning indignation
about spending today stood silent as their deficit-busting Trump tax breaks rewarded highly-profitable corporations that have gouged working families on everything from gas to groceries," Zelnick added.

"This is what Americans are in store for next year:
MAGA extremists serving the interests of billionaires, profiteering corporations, and other special interests while asking everyone else to pay for it."

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, a number of House Republicans—including McCarthy—made clear they would be willing to use every opportunity to push for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, climate investments, and more, even if it means holding the federal government and the entire U.S. economy hostage.

And they may have two major opportunities to do so
in the coming year.

The omnibus that the House is set to approve Friday only funds the government through September 2023, setting up another spending battle that Republicans will likely attempt to use as leverage to enact elements of their deeply unpopular agenda, which includes possible Medicare benefit cuts and Social Security privatization.

A looming fight over the debt ceiling—which Democratic congressional leaders have failed to defuse despite urgent pleas from rank-and-file lawmakers and progressive campaigners—could give House Republicans another chance to inflict harmful spending cuts, as they did during the debt ceiling showdown of 2011.

The U.S. government is set to reach the debt limit—an arbitrary figure set by Congress that dictates how much money the Treasury Department can borrow to meet its obligations—as soon as early 2023.

"This is what Americans are in store for next year:
MAGA extremists serving the interests of billionaires, profiteering corporations, and other special interests while asking everyone else to pay for it."

President Joe Biden, who has in the past advocated Social Security cuts, pledged in October to oppose
any GOP attack on the program.

"The Republican leadership in Congress has made it clear they will crash the economy next year by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States for the first time in our history, putting the United States in default, unless, unless, we yield to their demand to cut Social Security and Medicare."

Biden said in a speech at the White House.
"Let me be really clear: I will not yield. I will not cut Social Security. I will not cut Medicare, no matter how hard they work at it."

Mary Small, chief strategy officer for Indivisible, said Thursday that House Republicans' response to the omnibus foreshadows "what much of next year will look like: MAGA Republicans, desperate to out-extreme each other, ignoring the needs of everyday people."

"Their track record—from the January 6th select committee to this eleventh-hour funding bill—
proves that they won't be partners in governance," said Small.

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