South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Biden gives Rick Scott hell, and he deserves it
In his whistle stop campaign in 1948, President Truman was denouncing the Republican Congress when a spectator hollered “Give ’em hell, Harry.”
“I don’t give them hell,” Truman replied. “I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s hell.”
There was a moment like that in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech when he charged that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority ... Contact my office. I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.”
Loud catcalls and jeers rained down in the House chamber, but what Biden said was true. The question is, how many Republicans want to sunset these lifelines for millions of Americans?
This means you, Rick Scott
Only “some of you,” as Biden acknowledged. But at the very top of the list is Rick Scott, Florida’s junior senator, who’s up for re-election next year.
Biden was referring directly to the 12-point platform Scott put out last year as chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. It called for periodically sunsetting federal programs, including Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits and farm and defense programs — in short, everything. Biden turned up the heat on Scott in Tampa Thursday, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., heaped more criticism on “the
Rick Scott plan,” telling a Kentucky interviewer it will cause problems for Scott’s re-election.
Scott doubled down with doubletalk after Biden’s speech. He angrily called the remark “a lie.” But in his own statement, he confirmed Biden spoke the truth.
“In my plan, I suggested the following: All federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth passing, Congress can pass it again,” Scott said.
In so saying, Scott glibly minimized what “sunset” means to legislation. It automatically erases every law subject to sunset. Repeals it. Wipes it off the books until it’s renewed, if ever. Scott has created a monumental political problem for Republicans with older voters, and Biden is right to exploit it.
It’s a subject Biden knows very well: As a freshman U.S. senator from Delaware in 1975, Biden proposed periodic reviews of the same programs. He has obviously changed his position.
Staying dead
A truism in politics is that it’s always harder to pass a bill than to kill one. That gives a big advantage to anyone who might want a sunsetted law to stay dead, or use that advantage to force major changes before allowing it to be re-enacted.
In the Senate, that advantage is made more powerful by the filibuster rule (nowhere mentioned in the Constitution) which has degenerated and worsened since the days when it meant unlimited debate. Now it’s used to prevent debate from even beginning. Out of a 100-member Senate, merely 40 senators representing as little as 10% of the American population could conceivably prevent Social Security and Medicare from being renewed.
Both programs need attention before they run short of money. The trustees of their trust funds now predict that Social Security will deplete its reserves in 2034 and will be receiving enough new revenue to pay only 77% of required benefits. Medicare’s hospital trust fund, or Part A, would run short in 2028, able to pay only 90% of benefits. Congress could fix that by raising the amount of earnings subject to the Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund tax.
Even those financial projections are a de facto sunset. Congress would cut Social Security and Medicare simply by doing nothing. But that’s not the same thing as prospectively repealing them altogether.
Scott adamantly denies that he wants to actually cut Social Security and Medicare. But his sunset proposal would put them in jeopardy of just that. It gave Democrats a strong talking point in last year’s campaigns and got Scott in trouble with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who recognized the liability and did not endorse it.
After defeating Scott’s challenge to his leadership last month, McConnell pulled Scott off the Commerce Committee, depriving him of a platform for his sunset plan.
For the record, in 2020 there were 4.8 million Social Security beneficiaries in Florida, nearly as many on Medicare, and 1.5 million veterans.
Biden told the truth. It’s Republicans like Scott who think he gave them hell.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.