Comer says Biden, Schumer trying to ‘scare seniors’ over Medicare, Social Security

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) on Sunday blasted President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for trying to “scare seniors” by claiming the GOP plans to cut Social Security and Medicare as part of debt talks.

But the Republican lawmaker warned that “everything else is on the table.

“We’re not going to cut Social Security or Medicare. We’ve been very clear about that. It’s very disappointing that the president and Chuck Schumer would continue to try to scare seniors,” Comer said on ABC News’ “This Week.”

“These are important programs to everyone,” said Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee. “There’s bipartisan support for Social Security and Medicare. If anything, we need to shore those programs up. They’re running out of money.”

Still, while Comer said cuts to those programs are off limits, everything else is up for grabs when it comes to cuts proposed during talks involving raising the country’s debt ceiling.

Congress must raise the US’s debt ceiling by June, or the country will default.

Comer’s comments were prompted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asking him to respond to Schumer, who said in an earlier appearance on the show that Republicans want such spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. 

Schumer (D-NY) accused GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans of “holding hostage” raising the debt ceiling until their demands are met. 

“Do it clean. Do it without brinksmanship. Do it without this risk of hostage-taking where things could blow up because as you know, if we don’t renew the debt ceiling, average American families will be clobbered,” Schumer said on “This Week,” referring to raising GOP pols agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.

“Their interest rates would go up,” he said of Americans. “Their pension savings would go down. The cost of a house would go up … $100,000. So, it’s risky.

“McCarthy says he wants to attach certain spending cuts to do this. A, where is your plan, Mr. McCarthy? He says he wants cuts. We ask him which ones. He won’t say any. Is it Social Security and Medicare? That would hurt the American people,” the Democratic leader said.

McCarthy has​ been adamant that Republicans will not slash Social Security and Medicare and reiterated that the safety net programs should not be part of the debt ceiling discussions. ​

“First, the administration said they won’t negotiate, and then they want to play politics. Why are they so afraid to sit down to find where you can eliminate waste?”​ McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said. ​

Biden claimed at his State of the Union address last week that Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicaid, generating an immediate raucous denial from lawmakers across the aisle. He also made the assertion during a speech in Tampa, Fla., where he singled out a proposal from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) unveiled before last November’s midterm elections. ​

“Look, I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security, Medicare. Well, let me say this: If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare,” Biden said​ during the Florida speech.

“The very idea the senator from Florida wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years, I find to be somewhat outrageous, so outrageous that you might not even believe it,” he said.

Scott, the then-chair of the National Republican Senatorial ​Committee, released a 12-point Rescue American plan that called for reforming all federal programs. ​

“​All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again​,” the plan said. 

Republicans have condemned the proposal, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as recently as last week said it was a “bad idea.

“It is clearly the Rick Scott plan. It is not the Republican plan,” McConnell said. “And that’s the view of the speaker of the House, as well.”​

Biden’s critics have pointed out that he pushed to sunset federal laws during his decades in the Senate. ​

In 1975, ​the then-senator from Delaware introduced legislation to sunset “all provisions of the law in effect on the effective date of this Act which authorizes new budget authority for a period of more than four fiscal years.”