Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell probably thought he’d put the matter to rest. After President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address to target Republican Sen. Rick Scott’s plan on entitlements, the Kentucky Republican effectively told the political world not to take his Florida colleague’s vision too seriously.
“It’s just a bad idea,” McConnell said last week, referring to Scott’s plan to sunset programs like Social Security and Medicare every five years. “I think it will be a challenge for [Scott] to deal with this in his own re-election in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America.”
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said soon after that “the vast majority” of GOP senators prefer a “different direction” than Scott’s plan.
The far-right Floridian could take the hint and change the subject, but apparently thinks he can talk his way out of this.
The day after the State of the Union address, Scott accused Biden of lying, before undermining his position and offering fresh evidence that the president’s claims were true. Yesterday, the GOP senator appeared on Fox News and continued to endorse the plan that much of his party hates:
“I said [in my policy blueprint] that we ought to review programs every five years. They said somehow that’s a ‘cut.’ Well, you know what? If we, what do we do on defense? There’s no 40-year plan for defense. There’s no hundred-year plan for defense. Every year we go through the defense budget. So if you don’t support hundred-year plan for defense, you must be cutting defense every year.”
First, Social Security and Medicare are qualitatively different from military spending for reasons that should be obvious: Officials can make actuarial estimates about social insurance programs and future needs, while national security threats are constantly changing and evolving.
What’s more, Social Security and Medicare provide earned benefits to which Americans…
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