Rather than admitting that he wants to dramatically slash spending on Social Security and Medicare, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is now trying to shift blame for his heartless plan and suggest that others are the ones who have cut the programs.
But CNN anchor Jake Tapper is having none of Scott’s bullshit, and he called him out Thursday on the network, noting the the senator had tried to suggest that Tapper himself had reported Biden cut Medicare by billions of dollars.
Speaking with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Tapper began:
“You interviewed Senator Scott about his proposal, about the fact he did, in Rescue America, call for all federal legislation to sunset after five years and then it could be brought back up if Congress chooses to do so. Then he started saying that Democrats tried to cut Medicare spending. You pointed out what he was talking about was not a cut. It was allowing Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drugs, and then he tried to use something I said — I was very surprised by this — back in 2017 as his defense to that. Take a listen to this little excerpt.”
In the video clip, Scott remarks:
“Okay, Kaitlan, let me just read you something Jake Tapper said. This is back when Republicans were proposing reducing the cost of Medicaid. He said — Jake Tapper said, ‘I know the Trump Administration is excited that Medicaid will go back to the states where they have more control and can experiment and be more efficient, but without question, $880 billion is a cut.”
That led Tapper to rightly note:
“So, he didn’t include the quote where I talked about that the cut was analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office. Here’s what I actually said back in 2017. So the context here is I was quoting the CBO on its analysis for a proposal from Medicaid, and I was asking the Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, how that cut as, defined by CBO, didn’t violate Trump’s campaign promise to never make such a cut.”
Collins concurred with Tapper that Scott was blowing smoke out of his butt:
“Yeah, and really the issue here that it’s a separate matter, Jake.It’s what was most confusing to me as we were talking about this … what is happening here in the Inflation Reduction Act is that they reduced drug prices. Basically the government can negotiate drug prices. so basically their spending money. And reducing money is not the same as reducing drug prices. It makes the provision more beneficial to those recipients. That was not the point of the interview, was which was to talk about the plan he proposed, which, he told me this morning, does not believe a mistake. To roll out this plan that would sunset all this including Medicare, including Social Security every five years unless it was authorized by Congress. That is at the heart of the matter.”
Republicans have been dying to cut Social Security and Medicare for years. If you doubt that, consider what Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said in 2010:
“It will be my objective to phase out Social Security — to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.”