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An odd thing happened at this week’s State of the Union: President Biden and congressional Republicans got into a skirmish about an issue over which, apparently, they completely agree. Neither party, it seems, wants to make changes to Social Security or Medicare during upcoming negotiations to raise the debt ceiling.
“Some Republicans want Social Security and Medicare to sunset,” Biden said, drawing a cacophony of boos from GOP lawmakers. The firebrand Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up, gave him a thumbs down, and called him a “liar,” in what quickly became a viral moment. “That’s okay,” Biden retorted back. “I enjoy conversion.”
The President may not have extracted as clear a concession from the opposing party as he claimed. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters last month that changes to those programs were off the table in talks to prevent the federal government from defaulting on its debts. Yet the President was not exactly elevating a fringe GOP idea. Democratic strategists and conservative policy analysts have since marveled at how Biden was able to prod GOP leaders into running away from a position that was for years championed by some of their leading lights, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“The President did a masterful job of boxing Republicans in,” Jim Manley, a former senior aide to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, tells TIME. “Democrats have been salivating at the chance of using this issue.”
Biden was referring directly to a plan released last year by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who led the party’s Senate campaign arm during the 2022 midterms elections. It called for sunsetting all federal programs every five years unless Congress explicitly votes to keep them going. Such a proposal could put expensive programs like Social Security and Medicare in…
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