Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan allowed the Republican House Speaker to lie about his party's intentions to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, and insist they're "off the table" during their upcoming hostage negotiations over the debt limit.
Brennan asked McCarthy what they were willing to cut, given their promise not to spend more this year than we did last year, and if they were "willing to consider any reductions to Social Security and Medicare."
"Let's take those off the table," McCarthy replied. "Completely?" Brennan asked.
McCarthy responded with weasel speak about "strengthening" the programs. "Yeah. if you read our Commitment to America, all we talk about is strengthening Medicare and Social Security. I know the president says he doesn't want to look at it, but we have to make sure we strengthen those."
When pressed by Brennan, McCarthy denied that he was talking about raising the age for either program and still insisted that they want to keep both programs "to the side."
Which we all know if a bunch of baloney. First of all, as The Hill reported, if you look at their so-called Commitment to America, there's lots of double speak about "strengthening" the programs with no specifics, but there have been plenty of specific proposals by Republican lawmakers, and they all involve either raising the age or making cuts to our social safety nets, or pretending you'll strengthen them by cutting taxes and getting rid of government regulations.
And although Brennan did discuss their spending proposals, she failed to press him on the fact that their arithmetic doesn't pan out without cuts to widely popular programs, as Paul Krugman discussed in a recent column:
The Republicans who now control the House will soon try to slash Social Security and Medicare. They plan to achieve this by holding the economy hostage, threatening to create a financial crisis by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling. The interesting questions are why they want to do this, given that it appears politically suicidal, and how Democrats will respond.
Before I get into the puzzles, let me start by pointing out that the plot against the social safety net isn’t a conspiracy theory. The general shape of the scheme has been widely reported for months. The arithmetic is also clear: It isn’t possible to achieve huge reductions in the budget deficit, while depriving the I.R.S. of the resources it needs to go after tax cheats, without deep cuts in popular social programs.
And beyond all that, we now have it in black and white — well, blue on blue. CNN has obtained a screenshot of a slide presented at a closed-door Republican meeting on Tuesday. The first bullet point calls for balancing the budget within 10 years, which is mathematically impossible without deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The second calls for reforms to “mandatory spending” — which is budget-speak for the same programs. And the final point calls for refusing to raise the debt limit unless these demands are met.
So the plan isn’t a mystery. I would add only that if Republicans try to assure currently retired Americans that their benefits wouldn’t be affected, this promise isn’t feasible — not if they’re serious about balancing the budget within a decade.
As Krugman went onto discuss, these programs are popular even among Republican voters, especially their older voters, and cutting them will come with a heavy political price, which McCarthy is well aware of, thus the doublespeak about "strengthening" the programs. It's a shame he wasn't nailed down over the leaked meeting presentation and made to explain how they stick to their plan without the cuts we know full well a good portion of his caucus wants.
