McCarthy Took Social Security Cuts ‘Off the Table’ in Debt Ceiling Talks, but It’s Still ‘Third Rail’ in US Politics

U.S. President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) before delivering the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2023. (Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)

Republicans erupted in loud and sustained protest when President Joe Biden claimed during his Feb. 7 State of the Union (SOTU) address that they planned to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits for the elderly.

“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what their plans are. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” Biden said.

“That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away.”

In response, the chamber of the House of Representatives was rocked by Republican senators and congressmen shouting “No!” and “We never said that!”

Their anger was prompted by the fact that just the day before, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had taken cutting Social Security benefits “off the table” in a national address concerning his then-nascent negotiations with Biden on raising the debt ceiling. McCarthy appeared determined to end Social Security’s long-running status as the untouchable “third rail of American politics.”

The country has a $31.4 trillion national debt and can’t borrow another penny on the international money market until Congress approves a new ceiling. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised by this summer, the United States will default, with potentially catastrophic economic consequences, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Biden wants a “clean” debt ceiling hike that would allow the federal government to keep spending trillions of borrowed dollars that will have to be repaid someday and that, even now, cost hundreds of billions of dollars in annual interest payments.

McCarthy and most congressional Republicans say they'll agree to increase the debt ceiling only if it’s combined with spending reforms required to put the government on a sustainable 10-year path to a balanced budget. The last time the federal budget was balanced was in 2001.

Looming ever closer are the doomsday deadlines. The Medicare Hospital Trust Fund, from which most of the program’s benefits are paid, will become insolvent in five years (2028), and the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Benefit Insurance Trust Fund will reach that point in 11 years (2034) if nothing is changed.

“Upon insolvency, Social Security benefits will be reduced across-the-board by 20 percent under current law, while Medicare Hospital Insurance payments will be reduced by 10 percent,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Nearly 50 million retired Americans receive monthly Social Security checks, and an estimated 60 million receive Medicare benefits.

Given the reactions among both Democrats and Republicans since Biden’s SOTU, the prospects for restoring Medicare and Social Security to fiscal health anytime soon are dim. Republicans remain angry at Biden, and Democrats seem determined as ever to keep the untouchable third rail intact.

Republican anger has been heightened since Biden’s address as he and Democratic leaders in Congress launched a drumbeat repetition of claims that the GOP plans to slash the two biggest federal entitlement programs.

Just two days after the SOTU, Biden’s White House Press Office issued a fact sheet claiming that he “has taken action to strengthen Medicare and protect Social Security, bedrock programs that Americans have paid into and that tens of millions of seniors depend on to support their livelihoods.”

But the fact sheet states that “congressional Republicans, however, have a different record.”

“For years, Republican Members of Congress have repeatedly tried to cut Medicare and Social Security, move toward privatizing one or both programs, and raise the Social Security retirement age and Medicare eligibility age,” it reads.

Similarly, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued a Feb. 15 statement declaring: “If the Republicans’ goal really was working together to shore up the country’s fiscal health, they would never use the debt ceiling as a hostage-taking weapon. That’s because the default they’re threatening to trigger would be fiscally devastating and would make it much harder for the country to pay its debts. It could take years or even decades to recover. Democrats are going to stand firm against any Republican effort to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

Veteran Democratic strategists told The Epoch Times that leaders of their party have little faith in Republican leaders’ promises.

“I understand what the speaker and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell (R-Ky.) have said about taking Social Security and Medicare off the table, but no Democrat in their right mind should believe that McCarthy has any control over other members of his caucus that want to slash funding for those programs. Obviously, Senator McConnell is concerned about that as well,” veteran Capitol Hill and Democratic strategist Jim Manley told The Epoch Times.

He was referring to a Feb. 14 statement by McConnell saying Senate Republicans have no plans to reduce spending on either Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Manley was communications director for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and an aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) before that. He was also a surrogate campaign speaker for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign.

The political reality, according to longtime New York Democratic political strategist David Carlucci, is that “Speaker McCarthy vowing to leave Social Security and Medicare untouched during the debt ceiling process does not mean Republicans won’t look for other opportunities to remove these benefits.”

“Since its inception, calling for the gutting or destruction of Social Security has been a main component of the Republican platform,” Carlucci said. “This will not change with the approval of a new speaker.”

For their part, Republicans’ anger toward Biden for the SOTU remarks continues unabated.

“The Republican response was a resounding ‘no’ because not only was he lying about the economy, jobs, etc. He was dividing America. Totally unacceptable.” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times a week after Biden’s address.

Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) described Biden’s comments as “fear-mongering tactics” for which the president “should be ashamed of himself.”

“Listen, Republicans don’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare, but the one person that did was Joe Biden in the 1990s,” he said.

Weber was referring to a 1995 Senate floor speech in which Biden, who then represented Delaware in the upper chamber of Congress, declared his support for freezing Social Security and Medicare benefits.

“If Democrats were serious about strengthening and saving either Social Security or Medicare, they would engage in sober-minded reforms of the two programs before they go broke in the next 10 years,” Weber said. “But if they’re not, they can explain to those future seniors why they are stuck with 25 percent across-the-board cuts to their benefits. That is not a conversation that I would be looking forward to.”

In the same vein, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) warned that the United States is “headed for a fiscal reckoning if we don’t begin to curb wasteful federal spending and work toward balancing the budget.”

“That is why this debt limit negotiation is so important,” he said.

Good told The Epoch Times: “Any negotiation around the debt limit will not include cuts to Social Security or Medicare for our seniors who depend on them. We can start by cutting ‘woke’ spending from the Biden agenda, rescinding the 87,000 IRS agents, and reverting to pre-COVID spending levels on domestic programs.”

As for McCarthy, the House speaker’s deputy spokesman, Chad Gilmartin, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 21: “The Biden administration has falsely claimed that the border is ‘secure,’ the Afghanistan withdrawal was an ‘extraordinary success,’ and inflation is ‘transitory.’ And now they’re flatly lying about Republicans’ position on Social Security benefits instead of focusing on ways we can lift the debt limit in a responsible way.”

Even if Republicans did succeed in removing the third-rail status of Social Security and Medicare, it would only be binding on the present Congress, a constitutional and political reality pointed out by Heritage Foundation legal analyst Paul Larkin.

“I have to add that because, not only as a matter of law but as a matter of politics, nothing that any Congress does can bind any future Congress,” said Larkin, who’s a former Senate Judiciary Committee counsel.

“I think in the short run what the speaker said takes it off but it won’t keep anybody from saying, ‘Oh well, they really mean this; they have this secret goal and so forth.’”