Budget Deficit Archives

February 14, 2023

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• President Joe Biden has been criticized by major media outlets and Republican officials for his claims that Republicans are proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
• The Republican Study Committee (RSC) proposed a 2023 budget that would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits by increasing the retirement age and changing the benefit formula.
• Congressman Buddy Carter (R-GA) and Senator John Thune (R-ND) have both called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
• Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) proposed a plan to “sunset” all programs after five years, including Social Security and Medicare.
• Biden’s real vulnerability on the issue stems from his own efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare years ago.
• However, Biden has since changed his position and proposed to increase Social Security benefits, not freeze them.

Published February 14, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post The truth about Biden, the GOP, Social Security, and Medicare

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February 11, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen

In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]

February 12, 2023

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• President Biden’s statement during the State of the Union address that some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years was true.
• This statement was based on Florida senator Rick Scott’s 11-point plan, which promised that all federal legislation would sunset in 5 years.
• Republicans have a long history of calling for cuts to Social Security, including Trump, Mike Pence, Ron Johnson, and the Republican Study Committee.
• Biden’s statement comes from the “reality-based community,” which was famously dubbed in 2002 by a senior advisor to George W. Bush.
• Trump’s campaign hired a consulting firm to try to prove that the election had been stolen, but the firm could not find anything that would have changed the outcome.
• Representative George Santos and Anna Paulina Luna have both been accused of fabricating their biographies.
• Political decisions that are not based on reality rob us of our right to make informed decisions about our government and what it will do.
• Social Security and Medicare can be stabilized by cutting benefits, raising taxes, rearranging government funding, or by some combination of the three.
• Voters need fact-based information to elect people who will enact the policies a majority of us want.

Published February 12, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 11, 2023

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‘We Used to Be Called Moderate. We Are Not Moderate.’ [Russell Berman, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Atlantic]

January 27, 2023

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• The most important people in Washington during the upcoming debt ceiling crisis will be the House Republicans closest to the political center, known as the “moderates”.
• The Republican Main Street Partnership, a political organization founded 25 years ago by then-Representative Amo Houghton of New York, has rebranded itself to stay relevant in today’s GOP, dropping the words “moderate” and “centrist” from its mission statement.
• The Main Street Caucus, the largest of the three groups of self-identified “pragmatists”, elected a more conservative chair and vice chair.
• The “pragmatists” have already blocked two bills backed by some on the far right from coming up for a vote.
• The “pragmatists” could use a discharge petition to bypass the party leadership in the fiscal battles to come, but many of them are sounding like McCarthy, who has said the president must endorse spending cuts in order to lift the borrowing limit.
• Former Representative Charlie Dent predicted that Republicans would win few if any concessions from Democrats for raising the borrowing limit this time around.

Published January 27, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Russell Berman’s original post ‘We Used to Be Called Moderate. We Are Not Moderate.’

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The Logic Behind Biden’s Refusal to Negotiate the Debt Ceiling [Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Atlantic]

January 27, 2023

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• President Joe Biden is refusing to link increasing the debt ceiling with cutting federal spending, a decision rooted in the Obama administration’s experiences in 2011-15.
• In 2011, Obama and his team negotiated with House Republicans to link a debt-ceiling increase with spending cuts, but the negotiations failed and proved so disruptive to financial markets that Obama and his team emerged determined never to repeat it.
• In 2013, Obama declined to negotiate with House Republicans and the GOP eventually raised the debt ceiling without conditions.
• In 2011, Obama and Boehner came close to a “grand bargain” to control the long-term debt, but their negotiations foundered when they could not agree on the balance between tax increases and spending cuts.
• In 2013, House Republicans returned with a new set of demands for raising the debt ceiling, including unraveling Obama’s greatest legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act. Obama declined to talk with Republicans.
• Biden and his team have taken from the Obama years the lesson that if they don’t negotiate against the debt limit, a sufficient number of Republicans will eventually back down because the economic consequences of default would be so catastrophic.

Published January 27, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Ronald Brownstein’s original post The Logic Behind Biden’s Refusal to Negotiate the Debt Ceiling

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TagBudget Deficit

The truth about Biden, the GOP, Social Security, and Medicare [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

February 11, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

‘We Used to Be Called Moderate. We Are Not Moderate.’ [Russell Berman, The Atlantic]

The Logic Behind Biden’s Refusal to Negotiate the Debt Ceiling [Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic]

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