Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for his stance on Social Security and Medicare on Tuesday. Scott called him “disingenuous” after McConnell claimed conservatives on Capitol Hill would not touch either program.
Scott defended his 12-point “Rescue America” plan during a segment on Fox News. He claimed that his proposal to review government programs every five years does not mean cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
FACT CHECK: IS BIDEN A ‘LIAR’ FOR CLAIMING GOP WANTS SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE CUTS?
“It’s nice to get attacked by the Washington establishment because it tells everybody that I represent Floridians,” Scott said of McConnell.
“Congress ought to tell you how they’re going to preserve Medicare and Social Security that are going bankrupt. If I said we ought to review programs, somehow that’s a cut,” Scott said. “But what do we do about defense? There’s no 40-year plan on defense.”
Scott’s latest comments were a rebuttal to the feud between the two Republican senators, which has lasted over a year. Scott said that a change in funding Medicare and Social Security was necessary in order to preserve it.
“We don’t have a 100-year budget on defense. Every year, we go through the defense budget. If you don’t support a 100-year defense plan, you must be cutting defense every year. It’s disingenuous,” Scott said. “I don’t believe we should reduce the benefits, but guess what? [We have] $31.5 trillion of debt. When we get to $45 trillion, is somebody going to take it seriously and say how do we preserve these programs?”
Scott added that politicians were playing “got you” on Capitol Hill. He alleged that Democrats cut funding to Medicare by $280 billion as part of the massive Inflation Reduction Act — fact checkers have rejected Scott’s claim about cutting billions of dollars from Medicare.
McConnell doubled down on his stance that both programs were off the table when it comes to raising the debt ceiling by this summer.
“Let me say one more time: There is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.
“As you recall,” he continued, “there was some confusion last year about what the agenda of the Republican Senate might be if we were in the majority. I made it quite clear that as the likely majority, as I hoped at that time, Social Security and Medicare were not on our agenda, period.”
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The United States reached its debt limit in January and will need to raise the ceiling in order to pay off its loans. If Congress does not come up with a solution to repay the loans, the U.S. will default on its loans for the first time in history.
