Some GOP Lawmakers Want to Reform Social Security, Medicare

Some Republican lawmakers are insisting on addressing the mounting debt from Social Security and Medicare, despite GOP leadership vowing not to amend the programs, the Daily Caller reported.

The Social Security Administration has warned that its trust fund reserves could exhaust its resources if Congress doesn’t make changes. One projection by the Congressional Research Service predicts the program will reach insolvency by 2035.

“If we do nothing, we’re going to have anywhere from a 25% cut to a 26% cut across the board,” Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Kevin Hern of Oklahoma told the Daily Caller. 

President Joe Biden is “pushing for insolvency by not doing anything, If we look inside this budget window, there’s going to be an insolvency issue. And Joe Biden and the Democrats, and I would argue all Republicans, need to sit down and have an adult conversation about how we save what we promised to the American people.”

The RSC’s Blueprint to Save America 2023 budget calls for raising Social Security’s early and full retirement ages and means-testing the program for future recipients, the Daily Caller noted.

Meanwhile, Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Bill Cassidy, R-La., are considering gradually raising the retirement age to about 70 as part of their Social Security legislation overhaul, Semafor reported.

“This is an example of two leaders trying to find a solution to a clear and foreseeable danger,” Cassidy and King representatives told Semafor in a statement. “Although the final framework is still taking shape, there are no cuts for Americans currently receiving Social Security benefits in our plan. Indeed, many will receive additional benefits.”

The Daily Caller reports that Hern believes any discussion about Social Security must be bipartisan.

“It’s such a political issue, forever. If Democrats sit down and talk about it, they can’t go use that against Republicans when they want to have a serious discussion about cuts,” he said. “Reform has a dirty connotation up here, it’s like you want to change everything.

“You want to cut it. And that’s not what we want to do at all. We want to sit down and make sure its solvent for the future.”