After Speaker McCarthy said on Sunday he wants to “strengthen” Medicare and Social Security, the White House argued that the House and GOPers want to slash spending on entitlement programs, and have wanted to for years.
One of the recommendations made in the GOP’s “Committment to America” plan is that Congress must “must be prepared to make reforms to extend the solvency of the entitlement programs.”
“For years, congressional Republicans have advocated for slashing earned benefits using Washington code words like ‘strengthen,’ when their policies would privatize Medicare and Social Security, raise the retirement age, or cut benefits,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
“House Republicans refuse to raise revenue from the wealthy, but insist they will ‘strengthen’ earned benefits programs.”
Biden’s no-negotiation stance on the debt ceiling was learned in 2011 when Obama’s White House agreed to negotiations, and brought the U.S. economy to the brink of disaster.
The U.S. had just suffered its first credit downgrade. Markets were rattled. Consumer and business confidence was shaken. Stocks took a hit. And the recovery from the Great Recession was in question. Democrats averted the cliff — by acceding to $2 trillion in spending cuts the GOP had demanded after negotiations on a “grand bargain” broke down — but Obama and Biden agreed that the mere threat of default had taken a serious toll.
Biden and Obama made a vow: never again.
And Biden says he is not backing down with McCarthy’s House who is demanding concessions with the White House for increasing the debt ceiling in order to pay the government’s bills.
“I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip,” Biden said.
And so far, the GOP has no unified agreement regarding what spending they want cut.