Sounds like cutting Medicare and Social Security.
>> Well, it's certainly putting it up for grabs.
I mean, it's terrible policy and it's suicidal politics.
>> Yeah.
>> Because of the fact it's the old political cliche.
Social Security is the third rail of american politics.
>> Chris Wallace who used to be over at Fox is still very much
a conservative Republican.
But there he was attacking another fellow conservative Republican,
Senator Ron Johnson, after Johnson spoke about the need to
ensure that Medicare and Social Security.
Two wildly popular programs in this country should
move over to the discretionary spending category so
congress can basically chop away what is left of those programs.
He made these comments during a recent interview on the regular Joe show podcast.
Let's listen.
>> Spending has always been discretionary via spending is discretionary.
What's mandatory are things like Social Security and Medicare.
If you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost.
And our problem in this country is that more than 70% of our federal budget of our
federal spending is all mandatory spending.
It's an automatic pilot.
You just don't do proper oversight.
You don't get in there and fix the program's going bankrupt.
It's just an automatic pilot.
What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary
spending.
So it's all evaluated so that we can fix problems, fixed programs that are broken,
they're gonna be going bankrupt.
Because again, as long as things are on automatic pilot,
we just continue to pile up debt as mortgage our kids future.
It's this massive debt burden combined with additional massive deaths of
spending that sparked this inflation is wiping out people's wage gains,
making it impossible for them to make ends meet.
>> I mean, the idea that Social Security and
Medicare have contributed to inflation?
He's just throwing everything in there.
Like, your kid did really bad in their test and
it's because of Social Security and Medicare.
Your kid didn't get into their favorite colleges because of Social Security
and Medicare.
We really need to make sure that it's in the category of discretionary spending so
we can basically end those programs.
That's what republicans wanna do.
And it is such an unpopular position, that what Ron Johnson who is running for
re election in the Senate is doing here,
is providing a lay up to his Democratic opponent here.
Mandela Barnes who absolutely should win the senate seat.
Mandela Barnes responded to that by saying,
Ron Johnson is threatening to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Surprise, surprise, the self serving, multimillionaire senator is trying
to strip working people of the Social Security and Medicare benefits.
They've earned over a lifetime of work.
Now Mandela Barnes, Democratic opponent to Ron Johnson in the Senate seat, okay?
But it doesn't even take a democrat to make that argument because
Chris Wallace a conservative made a similar argument on CNN, let's watch.
>> Social Security is not money that is just handed out to Americans.
Hey, here's some free money, we pay into Social Security, we pay into Medicare.
It's in effect, an insurance policy like you pay premiums, nobody would say,
well, you're not entitled to the benefit for life insurance.
When the person who has the policy dies,
we have been paying into the system for years.
Look, there are problems with social security and Medicare.
I think the biggest one is that social security, which was passed I think in 1935
was the life expectancy was very different than it is now.
And I checked yesterday, you can begin getting social security benefits at 62.
The average life expectancy for an American man or woman is close to 80.
So it wasn't built for that kinda system.
Maybe you have to raise the retirement age.
But the idea of saying this isn't an entitlement, an entitlement is probably
the wrong word because it gives you this, I'm entitled to this.
The fact is you paid into it and
you're getting the benefit sometimes more than you actually paid in.
But the benefit of what you paid into the system in the first place.
>> Now, I agree with most of what Wallace said there, I don't think you need to
raise the retirement age, you can just lift the stupid Social Security cap.
Which this year is set at $147,000, to ensure that people making
above that don't get tax for Social Security past $147,000.
Obviously, that's a little bit of a tax break for the wealthy.
If you do away with that, we've got no issues with Social Security and
ensuring that people are to get the benefits that they have paid into.
But Emma thoughts, I know you've got a lot to say.
>> Yeah, everything you said is 100% accurate.
And we should be expanding Social Security and Medicare,
not talking about for Social Security raising the retirement age.
We should be as Bernie Sanders has proposed,
dropping the Medicare age precipitously until we get to Medicare for all.
But Biden is not very interest that.
I think it's really important to understand that while you can feel black
pilled, we have come a long way in the rhetoric around this,
because people forget that Obama wanted to cut Social Security in a grand bargain
with Mitch McConnell before, I think in 2012, something like that.
And he saw it was considered the third rail, but
he thought maybe I'll curry favor with mitch McConnell if we do that.
No, these programs are massively popular because they are expansive and
because they are universal and self funded,
we should never be cutting into them only expanded.
>> Absolutely, and Mandela Barnes focus on attacking Ron Johnson where it hurts.
Again, it is a layup.
This is an important issue to attack him on.
I think that it would be an effective strategy.
We need to get Ron Johnson out who by the way, took a pledge to not run for
re election and then ran for reelection anyway.
What a clown!