President Joe Biden and the White House have attacked Republicans in recent months for positions the president himself once held on Social Security and entitlement programs including sunset bills and raising the retirement age, a CNN KFile review of Biden’s record shows.
In his State of the Union address earlier this year, and in the months since, Biden has hammered Republicans over entitlements, saying they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. The president zeroed in on Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s sunset plan – though Biden himself introduced a similar proposal in 1975 – which would have sunset all legislation without exemptions for the two entitlement programs. Once Biden started attacking Scott for the lack of exemptions for the entitlement programs, Scott added that his sunset provisions would not apply to Social Security or Medicare.
Biden first introduced a proposal in 1975 that would have ceased funding all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – unless they were reauthorized by Congress. In fact, Biden’s bill was the first so-called federal sunset bill, something the president later boasted about in his 1978 Senate reelection campaign.
Biden has also attacked Republicans, saying congressional Republicans want to cut the two entitlement programs and raise the retirement age to 70. The White House vowed to not support any increase in the retirement age in any future negotiations with Republicans even though Biden himself once proposed raising the retirement age as life expectancy went up.
Biden, in one exchange pushing back against plans by then-President George W. Bush to partially privatize Social Security in 2005, said he was open to discussing benefit cuts to guarantee the solvency of the program.
“Raising the cap, raising the retirement age for people who are now 30 years old, raising the tax on Social…
Read the full article here