MINNEAPOLIS — The uncertain future of Social Security and Medicare led to one of the most unsettling, and bizarre few minutes of President Biden's State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
"Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset," President Biden said.
The accusation immediately spurred strong reactions from Republicans in the crowd, including head shaking, boos and name calling.
"I'm not saying it's a majority," Biden responded. "I'm politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some of you."
To be clear, Washington Post senior political reporter, Aaron Blake, says President Biden's controversial comments were much more about politics than politeness.
Kent Erdahl: "First of all, who is he talking about?"
Blake: "What President Biden was talking about is a proposal put forward last year by Senator Rick Scott from Florida. At the time Rick Scott was the head of Senate campaign efforts. He proposed a plan that would require Congress to reauthorize federal programs every five years. Now he didn't specifically site Social Security and Medicare, but those are Federal programs that would seemingly be included in that."
Though that proposal is real, Blake says Republicans took exception to Biden's comments because it was never widely popular and fizzled out months ago.
"What we saw was, almost instantly (last year), Republican leadership was distancing itself from this proposal, recognizing that it would be attached to those entitlement programs," Blake said. "Senate leader Mitch McConnell basically rebuked it publicly, saying that it wouldn't be part of his agenda."
So why did the President raise the issue in the first place? Blake says it was likely part of a larger effort to force republicans to publicly commit to leaving Social Security and Medicare alone during upcoming negotiations on raising the debt limit.
"As we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right?" Biden said, following the tense exchange. "We will not cut Social Security, we will not cut Medicare."
"Republicans are talking about balancing the federal budget right now," Blake said. "But it's very difficult to balance the budget if you're not touching entitlements though. If you're not touching defense spending, if you're not raising taxes, so if you're taking these things off the table, you're not talking about balancing the budget. The question is really, what are republicans talking about if they are serious about major spending cuts."
But even if both parties agree to leave the programs alone, Blake says both republicans and democrats know that simply not touching them will only delay the inevitable. The latest non-partisan analysis found that Medicare faces insolvency in 2028 and Social Security will reach it by 2035. If that happens, cuts and reductions to benefits will be inevitable.
Blake: "You have a situation where people don't want to talk about this, they don't want to put their proposals on paper, like Rick Scott did, and it leads to this kind of static situation where nothing is happening."
Erdahl: "It sounds like you're saying it's easier to scream and fight about it, than it is to do something about it."
Erdahl: "As is true with pretty much everything in politics, it's likely nothing actually will happen until the situation gets much closer to something amounting to a crisis, and people see in the very near future that these benefits are not going to be there for them. It's not exactly a profile in courage that Congress conducts itself in this way, but it's certainly of our current state of government. Especially when things are so polarized."
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