with Donald Trump Jr. on Trump’s “Triggered,” podcast, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy finally addressed the Social Security and Medicare question, saying “We won’t touch Medicare or Social Security.”
That comment comes alongside a claim from the co-founder of Punchbowl News, Jake Sherman, who said on Twitter that
“NEW:@Sen_JoeManchin just met w @SpeakerMcCarthy on the debt limit. MANCHIN said McCarthy told him he will not cut social security and Medicare”
“Manchin also said he hopes Biden will negotiate over the debt limit.”
Manchin made a similar comment on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying “We have to negotiate. This is the democracy that we have. We have a two-party system, if you will, and we should be able to talk and find out what our differences are.”
Speaker McCarthy, in not calling for cuts to those entitlement programs, is siding with former President Donald Trump in the battle over what to cut. Trump, in a video released to Truth Social, said “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree.”
Continuing, former President Trump added “While we absolutely need to stop Biden’s out of control spending, the pain should be borne by Washington bureaucrats, not by hard-working American families and American seniors. The seniors are being absolutely destroyed in the last two years.”
The fight over what to cut and whether to negotiate is important because America has hit the debt limit and has until June 5th to sort something out, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Speaker McCarthy in a January 19th letter.
In that letter, Yellen said that the debt ceiling had been reached and the Treasury Department was taking extraordinary action to continue funding the government, but that would only work until June 5th of this year. That makes the debate over what to cut, how to raise revenue, and how much to increase the debt ceiling pressing if not yet urgent.
Americans would largely prefer a government shutdown to a debt ceiling increase and yet more spending, as a recent poll conducted by Rasmussen found. Reporting on that poll, The American Tribune said:
The political winds continue to shift, with the latest signal coming from a new Ramsussen poll that shows a full majority of Americans would simply prefer a government shutdown over raised debt ceilings.
According to Rasmussen, 56% of respondents agreed with the idea that a partial government shutdown was preferential if it meant government cut or maintained spending. These people are tired of endless government spending. At the same time, 34% said the opposite; they’d like to see more government spending to avoid a shutdown.
In fact, the spending problem has gotten so bad that even liberals like Bill Maher are saying someone needs to stop the spending. He, in a recent show, said “So, I understand the Republican idea that we have to say, well, these people are spending like drunken sailors and an adult has to cut up the credit card.”
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1
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