Do Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare? Here’s what to know.
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President Biden in his State of the Union address called out some Republicans for wanting to cut crucial social safety net programs.
Apparently President Biden and Republicans in Congress agree — Social Security and Medicare will not face cuts during the tense negotiations over the U.S. debt limit.
Some GOP leaders have called for slashing the federal government’s two main social safety net programs, and they said they would use them as leverage to extract concessions from the White House in the fragile talks that could sink the global economy into a deep recession. But during Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, he goaded GOP hard-liners about proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Do Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare?
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Some Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, including key members of the GOP’s congressional leadership.
The most high-profile Republican pushing those cuts is Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), who led the party’s Senate campaign committee during the 2022 midterm elections. Scott put out a platform that called for sunsetting all federal legislation after five years. That means Congress would have to renew massive programs — like Social Security and Medicare — and their funding levels twice per decade.
The Republican Study Committee, an influential House group that drafts GOP policy proposals, put forward a 2023 budget that called for raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. The group also suggests cutting the benefits for the spouses and children of future retirees and disabled workers and increasing the Social Security retirement age to 69 for younger workers, then linking the retirement age to increases in life expectancy. In other words, as Americans live longer, they’d also have to work longer before they could receive full Social Security benefits.
“You’ve got to protect Medicare and Social Security. And the path the Democrats are going, they are going to go bankrupt,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) told reporters in January. “Let’s sit down and find a place that we can protect Medicare and Social Security for the future generations, let’s put our house in order on how we’re going to spend, and let’s make the investments we need to make America stronger.”
“We have no choice but to make hard decisions,” added Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “Everybody has to look at everything.”
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