CLAIM: President Joe Biden said on Thursday that “MAGA Republicans” want to gut entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
VERDICT: False. Leading Republicans have said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are not up for consideration.
During a speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Thursday discussing his budget plan, he said he would protect Social Security and Medicare and claimed that Republicans want to slash spending for the entitlement programs.
“I will protect Social Security and Medicare. Guaranteed. I won’t allow it to be gutted or eliminated as ‘MAGA Republicans’ want to do,” Biden said.
He then said that his budget proposal will not cut benefits or sunset programs.
“I will protect Social Security and Medicare.”
President Joe Biden presented a budget plan Thursday that would cut deficits by $2.9 trillion over the next decade — a proposal that Republicans already intend to reject. https://t.co/iaiVlI3l3l pic.twitter.com/565CSIAHy5— The Associated Press (@AP) March 9, 2023
This is a repeated line of attack against Republicans, which Biden used to contrast his administration against Republicans during the State of the Union address in February.
However, as readers may know, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has said that cuts to entitlement programs are not on the table during the continuing debt ceiling negotiations.
Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle that he will never cut Social Security if elected again.
Perhaps ironically, it is Biden’s administration that is proposing cuts to Medicare Advantage, or Medicare Part C, which is a public-private partnership in which Medicare pays private-sector health insurers a fixed payment. Breitbart News explained:
In the first plan, the Biden administration plans to claw back at least $4.7 billion from 2023 through 2032 by identifying and recovering alleged overpayments.
In the other, more drastic move, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said Medicare Advantage insurers could face an average 2.3 percent cut to baseline payments in 2024. This would be a cut of more than $3 billion to the Medicare Advantage industry.
Republicans such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), and Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) have countered Biden’s rhetoric by pointing out this apparent hypocrisy.
Biden may not have remembered that he sponsored a bill in 1975, when he was a senator from Delaware, that proposed legislation to sunset and subsequently reauthorize all federal programs, which reportedly included Social Security and Medicare. This proposal is remarkably similar to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) original proposal, which Biden has frequently attacked.
That 1975 legislation was sponsored by four Senate Democrats, including former Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT).
“We must… begin reviewing existing programs to determine whether they are still effective, and whether they are worth the money that we are putting in them. We must eliminate the wasteful ones,” Biden said when introducing the 1975 legislation.
“One thing that we have all observed is that once a federal program gets started, it is very difficult to stop it, or even change its emphasis, regardless of its performance in the past,” then-Sen. Biden continued. “It is time for us to require, on a regular and continuing basis, that both the administrators of these programs and we legislators who adopt the programs, examine their operations with care and detail.”
In a February 9 press conference, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about Biden’s 1975 legislation, “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts, and he reiterated that in the State of the Union. He’s been very clear these past couple of years. Rick Scott has the opposite point,” Jean-Pierre told the press. “That’s just what we’re seeing from Scott.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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