Another House Republican Is Being Loud And Clear About Plans To Slash Medicare

Donald Trump has been publicly insistent for months about his supposed position on the social safety net programs Medicare and Social Security: he will not cut a dollar from their budgets.

But that, of course, comes as his allies in Congress privately discuss offsetting the cost of extending his 2017 tax cuts with “reforms” targeting Medicaid and food stamps, and as he appoints the supremely unqualified TV doctor Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in his new administration, with vows to “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency.”

As TPM has been reporting, it’s a familiar rhetorical dance for Republicans as they seek to slash social safety net programs that provide invaluable assistance to America’s most vulnerable, couched in the language of “reforms.” While there has been some veiled language tossed around about cutting out “waste” and “fraud” as Trump and his allies salivate about the possible ways to deploy the Elon Musk-Vivek Ramaswamy “efficiency” department, other House Republicans are being explicit about using the cover provided by the unit to make substantial cuts to entitlements.

Just last week, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told Fox Business News that he’s going to work on helping his Republican colleagues “stomach” making cuts to the programs. A few days later, Rep. Ralph Norman gave a rather blunt response when asked if the Department of Government Efficiency would put Medicare on the chopping block: “Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing.”

This morning, Missouri Republican Rep. Mark Alford made similar noises about “waste, abuse and fraud in Medicare” before resurrecting another disingenuous “reform” line on Social Security that’s been floated by right-wingers in the past: pushing back the retirement age.

“We all agree this is an unsustainable area that we’re in right now — almost $36 trillion in debt, and we are spending more on the interest on our debt than we are going to spend on the National Defense Authorization Act this year,” he told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo Monday.

“And so we’ve got to right the ship, and it’s going to mean cuts. It’s going to mean cuts to the 24 percent of the discretionary spending that we have, and it’s also going to mean looking long-term at the front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare,” he continued. “… There is some waste, abuse and fraud in Medicare that we can take those numbers back and add to our general coffers and our treasury.”

“And on the front end on Social Security, I think there’s a way, when people are living longer, they’re retiring later, then on the front end we can move that retirement age back a little bit,” he said.

The lies about slashing the social safety net are a surprise only to voters who took Trump at his word when he said to raucous applause on the campaign trail: “I will cut all of the bad talk about Social Security. They’re going to destroy your Social Security, but I will not cut 1 cent from Social Security or Medicare.”