Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy mentioned the debt ceiling settlement is simply “step one” of the GOP’s broader agenda.
After securing a debt ceiling settlement that caps federal spending and threatens meals help for hundreds of thousands of poor adults, Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy made clear Wednesday that Republicans aren’t completed concentrating on the nation’s security internet applications — and signaled a coming effort by the GOP to slash Social Safety and Medicare.
In a Fox Information look forward of the Home’s passage of the debt restrict laws, McCarthy (R-Calif.) mentioned the measure is simply “step one” of the GOP’s broader agenda, which incorporates additional cuts to federal applications and massive tax breaks for the rich.
“This isn’t the tip. This doesn’t remedy all the issues,” the Republican chief mentioned of the Home-passed invoice, which might carry the debt ceiling till January 2025 — organising one other potential standoff shortly after the 2024 elections.
McCarthy lamented that President Joe Biden “walled off” main elements of the federal price range, together with Social Safety and Medicare, from cuts as a part of the debt ceiling settlement — although McCarthy himself agreed to “take those off the table” in late January.
“The bulk driver of the price range is obligatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Safety, curiosity on the debt,” the Republican speaker mentioned Wednesday, including that he intends to announce a bipartisan “fee” to look at methods to chop such spending.
The progressive group Our Revolution responded that “it’s by no means sufficient for the precise wing.”
“They need all of it,” the group wrote on Twitter. “Now we have to inform them NO.”
Watch McCarthy’s feedback:
Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy pronounces he’s assembling “a fee” to have a look at potential cuts in entitlement applications:
“The president walled off all of the others. The bulk driver of the price range is obligatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Safety, curiosity on the debt.” pic.twitter.com/vm3jUuL6fO
— The Recount (@therecount) May 31, 2023
The thought of forming a bipartisan fee to review and suggest cuts to Social Safety, Medicare, and different non-discretionary spending is hardly new.
In 2021, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) led a bunch of Republican and Democratic lawmakers — together with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) — in unveiling legislation that will set up bipartisan panels to review and suggest adjustments to the nation’s belief funds, a scheme modeled after the Obama-era Simpson-Bowles fee that recommended Social Safety cuts.
The adjustments proposed by the so-called “rescue committees” would then obtain expedited votes within the Home and Senate.
Advocacy teams have described the Romney laws, referred to as the TRUST Act, as an insidious ploy to chop Medicare and Social Safety behind closed doorways. Republicans have additionally proposed elevating the Social Safety retirement age, a transfer that will slash benefits across the board.
Social Security Works, which has been speaking out in opposition to the TRUST Act for years, said Wednesday that “MAGA Republicans wish to attain into our pockets and steal our earned Social Safety and Medicare advantages.”
Jon Bauman, president of the Social Safety Works PAC, urged the general public to “beware the ‘Drawback Solvers’ and ‘No Labels’-style Democrats who can be keen to ‘serve’ on McCarthy’s fee to chop your earned advantages.”
“They’re downside MAKERS,” he wrote.
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