White House Should Stop Demagoguing Social Security and Medicare

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates today described commissions to save the Social Security and Medicare programs from insolvency as a “death panel for Medicare and Social Security.”

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Washington has only a decade to save Social Security, before the law calls for a 20 percent across-the-board benefit cut. They have even less time for Medicare.

This kind of heated rhetoric is dishonest, counterproductive, and totally unacceptable.

And President Biden should know better – his vote in favor of the 1983 Social Security amendments, proposed by the Greenspan Commission, helped extend the life of that program for 50 years.

The White House needs to stop demagoguing this issue and start taking looming insolvency seriously. Sixty-five million seniors and people with disabilities count on Social Security and Medicare.

Attacking a bipartisan idea as a “death panel” demonstrates a lack of seriousness on this important issue.

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For more information, please contact Kim McIntyre, Director of Media Relations, at mcintyre@crfb.org.