Joe Biden Tried Multiple Times To Cut Medicare And Social Security

Many of his positions on spending and deficits that President Joe Biden attacked in his speech Message from the State of the Union He once believed. That contrast demonstrates one of the prime reasons Washington will not get federal spending under control—opportunistic political charlatans like the current occupant of the Oval Office.

The president attacked lawmakers who supported his agenda “want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” He should have used the perpendicular pronoun to begin. In July 1975, Senator Biden proposed the idea. Legislation To terminate “all provisions of law in effect on the effective date of this Act which authorize new budget authority for a period of more than four fiscal years.”

Biden’s supporters may try to parse that language by claiming that terminating the authorizations for Medicare, Social Security, or the military would not necessarily prevent federal dollars from flowing to those programs. But such claims stand at odds with Biden’s own comments regarding his bill. Biden said that the bill “requires every program”—including Medicare and Social Security—“to be looked at freshly at least once every four years. The examination is not just of the increased cost of the program, but of the worthiness of the entire program.”

Biden made the same claim when he claimed that “if anyone tries to cut Social Security [and Medicare], I will stop them,” He left out His long-standing support of proposals These programs will be cut. Biden and Sens. Chuck Grassley (Republican-Iowa) and Nancy Landon Kassebaum (Republican-Kansas) proposed a blanket freeze on federal spending.

The bill would have ended all cost-of living increases in federal employee salaries, Social Security, and Medicare benefits for fiscal year 1985. Biden and three other senators stated that they support the freeze in a Washington Post joint op-ed. “federal deficits are a clear and present danger to our economic recovery.”

Biden claimed that Republicans had voted for him. “say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history,” He did not mention that he wanted to do it previously. Biden supported an amended debt limit bill by Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts in October 1984. Tsongas’ amendment would have allowed for an increase in the debt limit that was less than the original bill. It also prohibited additional debt limit increases until Congress had enacted a spending freeze.

Biden said he supported Tsongas’ action precisely “because it says we cannot increase the debt limit again until we have acted on a budget freeze”—one that would, like Biden’s spring proposal, have frozen Medicare and Social Security benefits. Biden voted against increasing the debt limit after the Tsongas Amendment failed.

As important as Biden’s support for a freeze was his publicly stated reason for suggesting it. He claimed that a federal spending freeze would be effective because voters in an October 1984 speech. “are not stupid…They are not dumb. These folks understand. They know that to cut the deficit, everybody has to be in it.”

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