Uncle Joe Brandon keeps telling the truth
After President Joe Biden pummeled Republicans on Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union address, drawing shouts of outrage from the party, Republican leaders urged him to stop telling Americans that the GOP wants to slash those retirement programs.
Then Biden paid a visit to Florida and did it again, exasperating the party and escalating a fight that is poised to play out on Capitol Hill and in the 2024 presidential election.
“The president, for a few weeks now, has been falsely saying that there are people that want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. And it’s been inaccurate for a long time — and you saw last night when he tried to pin it on us,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told NBC News one day after Biden’s speech to Congress. “I just hope he stops going around the country telling that falsehood because there’s no truth to it.
We want to strengthen Social Security by ending a lot of those government checks to people staying at home rather than going to work,” Scalise said, endorsing work requirements for benefits.
The next day, at the University of Tampa on Thursday, Biden tore into a plan from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., saying it would “sunset Social Security and Medicare every five years.” He also went after Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has labeled Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” and called for restructuring it.
“They were offended. ‘Liar! Liar!’” Biden mimicked.
The Republican response here — “We don’t want to cut Social Security, we just want to reduce the deficit while cutting taxes and increasing defense spending, have the program expire every five years, and by the way the program is a Ponzi scheme and we oppose any social spending that goes to lazy bums who don’t work in principle” –is being treated by Biden exactly as seriously as it should be. Don’t believe me, believe the head of the Republican Senate election campaign:
Hey guys I did some investigative reporting and found the smoking gun https://t.co/QhRFut9krc pic.twitter.com/z8IaWTK2Pq— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2023
And believe what Ron DeSantis said and how he voted when he was a member of Congress. Don’t stop, and make sure to start talking about how much they want to gut Medicaid too.