Social Security and Medicare in the crosshairs

“Don’t tell anybody.”

That’s the approach Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took when approached recently with the question of what his party would do if it regained control of Congress next year. McConnell said: “I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

Such failure to disclose your party’s plans makes a mockery of the democratic process where voters are expected to make informed decisions when they cast their ballots.

It may also be a way to keep politically unpopular Republican agenda items hidden during the election for fear they would cost the party’s candidates votes. That, actually, appears to be the case — for God’s sake, don’t tell them before the election!

But, other GOP leaders are less coy than McConnell and, thanks to them, the political cat is out of the bag. It is a truly ugly cat. Turns out that Social Security and Medicare are in the GOP’s crosshairs. And Republicans do not want Montana senior voters focusing on that, because a full 25% of Montana’s voting age population is over the age of 65.

Full disclosure: over the years I have written about Social Security and Medicare in the abstract. But for the last decade I have joined so many of my fellow Montanans as someone who depends upon that monthly retirement check.

So along comes the chair of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, publically announcing the GOP plans, calling them a “rescue plan” for the country. Saying “Americans deserve to know what we will do,” Scott’s GOP plan for America put all federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare, under a “sunset provision” that would take them to zero and force them to be re-enacted in order for the programs to cut checks to citizens who have throughout their lives put their own money in to support their future retirement.

Imagine that. Take your future monthly Social Security checks and your right to have Medicare support for important medical procedures and take them to zero before deciding to maybe restore some of the cuts.

And Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin goes even more extreme. He wants the commitment to your monthly Social Security payment and your Medicare help to drop to zero every year. He says the allocation of your money for your Social Security payments should no longer be “mandatory spending.”

Imagine putting your financial future, your daily ability to survive, in the hands of a bunch in Washington who can hardly pass a bill that simply names a post office.

It is there on the House side, too. Kevin McCarthy, who would become Speaker of the House if Ryan Zinke and a few more Republicans get added to their current 212 GOP members, has also revealed plans to put Social Security, Medicare and other so-called “entitlements” on the chopping block.

This 2022 GOP attack on Social Security and Medicare, now revealed, is not surprising coming from the folks who almost unanimously opposed the enactment of both back in 1935 and 1965.

Many times they’ve tried this before. For example the budget proposed by GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2014 included a privatization of Medicare. Then Congressional candidate Ryan Zinke supported that budget and even said in the Billings Gazette that the cuts weren’t “quite as aggressive as I would like.”

The National Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare has endorsed Monica Tranel for Congress in Montana’s Western District because of her stalwart support for Social Security and Medicare, which are so important to Montana seniors.

At this point, the only thing that Montana senior voters can do to insure their social security and Medicare are not cut by a GOP majority in the House of Representative is to vote for Monica Tranel for Congress, plain and simple.

Evan Barrett worked in Montana government, politics, economic development and education. He lives in Butte.