Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Calling On House Republicans To Show The American People Their Plan To Cut Spending And Stop Holding The Debt Ceiling Hostage
Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor and called for House Republicans to raise the debt ceiling without brinkmanship and to show the American people their plan to cut spending. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Last week, President Biden distilled the sharp contrast between the Democratic and Republican approaches to the debt ceiling – and in the days since, Republicans have made that contrast even sharper.
Democrats have been clear about our position – very clear, crystal clear: we must raise the debt ceiling cleanly, in a bipartisan fashion, without blackmail or brinkmanship or hostage taking.
House Republicans have taken a different and far more dangerous approach. Rather than affirm the need to raise the debt ceiling together, House Republicans are trying to force the rest of the country into a perilous game of chicken, threatening to withhold their support for lifting the debt ceiling unless everyone agrees to spending cuts first.
But to this day, to this day, despite more than a month of questioning, House Republicans won’t answer one question: What cuts do they want? Where is their plan? House Republicans, where is your plan?
I say to House Republicans, enough with the games: show us your plan! You say you want cuts, well, what are they? You have an obligation, not only to show us, but the American people what they are. These could be quite dangerous to tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of Americans.
Are House Republicans going to put Social Security and Medicare on the table in exchange for the debt ceiling?
Well last week, Republicans erupted like wild hornets during the State of the Union when President Biden pointed out the obvious: that many within their own party have been very open about wanting to target Social Security and Medicare. Rick Scott being among them, and he was the leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But listen to this one – if you think this is just a few people, a few dangerous people doing this, dangerous on Social Security and Medicare, that is – the Republican Study Committee, which includes a majority, a majority, of House Republicans – at least half, this is not some fringe group but half of the entire House Conference, released a budget last year that proposed raising Social Security retirement age, cutting benefits to certain recipients, and even privatizing some parts of Social Security.
Let me say that again, because this, I don’t know if it’s been reported but it’s astounding. The Republican Study Committee, including a majority of House Republicans, released a budget just last year that proposed raising the Social Security retirement age, cutting benefits to certain recipients, and even privatizing some parts of Social Security.
And almost as if to prove President Biden correct, Senator Johnson of Wisconsin reacted to the State of the Union by going on radio and calling for annual votes on Social Security, calling it a “Ponzi scheme.”
Let me say that one again too: according to Wisconsin’s Public Radio, Senator Johnson last week openly called Social Security a Ponzi scheme before bemoaning the failed attempt to privatize the program during the Bush Administration.
A: it’s an incredible example of how out-of-touch MAGA Republicans are from average Americans. And B: it shows that this idea – that Republicans don’t want to cut Social Security – is not at all clear, no matter what Speaker McCarthy says. There are too many in his ranks who either are calling for it now or have called for it in the recent past.
We Democrats are not going to stop fighting until this plan, bubbling up in Republican quarters even now, to cut Social Security, to cut Medicare, is dead – D-E-A-D.
So, it brings us back to the $64,000 question: are Republicans going to target Social Security and Medicare?
Until Republicans actually show us their plan, we simply can’t take them at their word that Social Security and Medicare won’t be touched, because the record over the last few years clearly shows that many of them are open to doing just that, cutting it.
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