A new report from The American Independent highlighted calls from Republican U.S. Senators Rick Scott (FL) and Ron Johnson (WI) to put Medicare and Social Security up for a vote – and at risk of expiration – each year.
This goes further than his calls earlier this year to sunset Medicare and Social Security every five years – already a drastic move that would threaten benefits upon which tens of millions of Americans rely.
Despite evidence that these plans would “increase taxes for millions of poor families,” the GOP continues to tout these misguided policies as ways to save taxpayer money — snubbing more than 60 million Americans receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits.
The American Independent: White House warns about GOP plan to put Social Security, Medicare on ‘chopping block’
By: Oliver Willis | September 30, 2022
In August, [Senator Ron] Johnson said Social Security and Medicare should be funded annually through discretionary spending, a plan even more extreme than Scott’s.
“What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt,” Johnson told radio station WTAQ.
Scott was asked about Johnson’s statement during an Aug. 5 appearance on CNN. Repeating debunked false claims about the financial health of Social Security and Medicare, Scott told Wolf Blitzer:
“I think people around the country are surprised that everything in the budget we don’t look at every year. Because right now we know Medicare is going bankrupt in four years, and up here there’s no conversation about how do we make sure people get their Medicare benefits. They know Social Security goes bankrupt in twelve years, and up here there’s no conversation about how do we make sure people get their Social Security benefits. So from my standpoint, I think we ought to be talking about these issues and make sure that these are so important programs that we talk about it every year and we make sure people get their Medicare benefits and their Social Security benefits.”
In the same interview, Scott contrasted Social Security and Medicare funding with the defense budget, noting, “That’s how we do our defense budget. We look at it every year. We don’t say, Oh, we’re going to have the exact same program the exact same way, but we know we want to have a lethal military that can defend the freedom of this country. “
An annual authorization of entitlement programs opens the door to the possibility that without congressional agreement, Social Security and Medicare could go unfunded.
Read the full story here.
Published: Oct 3, 2022 | Last Modified: Oct 4, 2022