Trump Told Republican Member Of Congress He Was Open To Reform Medicare And Social Security On The First Day Of His Second Term
Ramesh Ponnuru Tweeted That A GOP Congressman Had Told Reporters That Trump Had Said He Was Open To Reform Medicare And Social Security âOn The First Day Of His Second Term.â According to a tweet by Ramesh Ponnuru, âGOP congressman tells reporters that Trump told him he is open to reform of Medicare, SS âon the first day of his second term.â
Trump Told Republican Member Of Congress, âHe Would Not Touch Social Security âUntil The First Day Of His Second Term.â According to Business Insider, âWhen asked about Trumps level of seriousness on the issue, the Republican said the president would not touch Social Security âuntil the first day of his second term, he told me once.
- Republican Member of Congress Spoke On Condition Of Anonymity. According to Business Insider, âThe Republican member of Congress spoke with a small group of reporters Thursday about a wide range of subjects on a condition of anonymity. The member said both parties and past administrations were to blame for a lack of effort to reform entitlements, citing a gap in leadership on the issue. âUntil you have an administration willing to actually tackle entitlement reform, the idea that Congress is just going to magically produce it on its own,â the lawmaker said. âEntitlement reform always takes leadership at the presidential level, and it also takes â by the way, real reform takes bipartisanship.
Rnc Goes After Bill De Blasio Hes Not On The Ballot And Already Has Low Approval Ratings
Dartunorro Clark
The RNC played a montage fearing residents and tenant leaders from New York Citys House Authority buildings, which houses low-income New Yorkers.
The residents and video slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is not on the Democratic ticket. Whats more, he was not invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. Since the start of the pandemic and racial unrest, de Blasio has been routinely criticized by both conservatives and progressives.
A Change Research poll in March put him at a 40 percent approval rating among the citys residents.
Have Medicare Benefits Already Decreased Under Trump
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , Medicare spending has actually increased in the Trump presidency, not just in terms of dollars, which are subject to inflation, but in terms of percentages.
Some Medicare premiums also may be slightly lower now. According to CMS, the average Medicare Advantage premium 2019 is estimated to be $28 in 2019, down from $29.81 in 2018.
In terms of dollars, Medicare benefits totaled $702 billion in 2017, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Read Also: Patriotic Men’s Button Up Shirts
Biden: Trump Keeps Pouring ‘gasoline On The Fire’ Of Violence
WASHINGTON Joe Biden said Thursday that President Donald Trump is “rooting for more violence, not less” because he thinks it benefits him politically.
In an interview on MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell Reports, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee reacted to Vice President Mike Pences speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night in which he said that people wont be safe in Joe Bidens America.
Biden added about Trump, He views this as a political benefit to him, you know. He’s rooting for more violence, not less, and it’s clear about that. And what’s he doing, he’s kept pouring gasoline on the fire.
Sen Tom Cotton: ‘joe Biden Would Return Us To A Weak Dangerous Past’
Five months later, he told NBC News Meet the Press that hed privately told Obama after that meeting had ended to, Follow your instincts, Mr. President and that Biden had wanted him to take one more day to do one more test to see if he was there.
He further leaned into that version in a 2015 interview, saying that I thought he should go, but follow his own instincts. Biden then contradicted his initial claims, saying, imagine if I had said in front of everyone, ‘Don’t go,’ or ‘Go,’ and his decision was a different decision. It undercuts that relationship.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, in her 2014 book Hard Choices, wrote that Biden remained skeptical about the raid, while Gates in his 2014 book, wrote that he and Biden were both skeptics.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., leveled several accusations against Joe Biden, mostly regarding his views and actions as vice president on foreign policy. This one, about what a former defense secretary had to say about Biden’s judgment, is accurate.
Cotton said that Barack Obama’s own secretary of defense said Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major national security decision over the past four decades.
This is true. Robert Gates, who served as President Obamas secretary of defense for more than two years, wrote in his 2014 memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary At War, that Biden had been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Also Check: Joe Biden Republican Vice President
‘i Am Free’: Alice Marie Johnson Thanks Trump For Commuting Her Sentence At The Rnc
Johnson had been in federal lockup for more than 21 years after being found guilty in connection to a drug trafficking conspiracy, and she would likely have died behind bars without the president’s clemency. She was one of the thousands of Americans serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses, according to a 2013 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, the vast majority of whom are there on drug crimes.
Since her sentence was commuted by Trump in June 2018, she has consistently thanked Kardashian West and the president for her release and Trump has also used her story as he advocates from criminal justice reform. In her speech on Thursday, she did explicitly not urge Americans to re-elect the president, but praised and thanked him for his actions on criminal justice.
“I pray that you will not just hear this message, but that you will be inspired by my story and your compassion will lead you to take action for those who are forgotten. That’s what our president, Donald Trump did for me,” she said. “And for that, I will be forever grateful. God bless you. God bless President Trump, and God bless America.”
Ali Gostanian and Caitlin Fichtel
The Republican National Convention aired a video on Monday decrying U.S. protests and citing potential chaos in the streets if Joe Biden is elected president.
The Trump campaign and the RNC did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Press Releasetrump Administration Announces Changes To Medicare Advantage And Part D To Provide Better Coverage And Increase Access For Medicare Beneficiaries
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today finalized requirements that will increase access to telehealth for seniors in Medicare Advantage plans, expand the types of supplemental benefits available for beneficiaries with an MA plan who have chronic diseases, provide support for more MA options for beneficiaries in rural communities, and expand access to MA for patients with End Stage Renal Disease . Together, the changes advance President Trumps Executive Orders on Protecting and Improving Medicare for Our Nations Seniors and Advancing American Kidney Health as well as several of the CMS strategic initiatives.
Due to the upcoming June 1, 2020, MA and Part D bid deadlines for the 2021 plan year, CMS is finalizing a subset of the proposed policies before the MA and Part D plans bids are due. CMS plans to address the remaining proposals for plans later in 2020 for the 2022 plan year. We understand that the entire healthcare sector is focused on caring for patients and providing coverage related to coronavirus disease 2019 , and we believe this approach provides plans with adequate time and information to design the best coverage for Medicare beneficiaries.
For a fact sheet on the Contract Year 2021 Medicare Advantage and Part D Final Rule , please visit:
Don’t Miss: Hampton Inn Mt Pleasant Patriots Point
Things To Know About Trump’s Budget Plan For Medicare Medicaid
Trump’s budget would reduce $451B in Medicare spending over 10 years.
President Donald Trump said he wouldnt touch Medicare before pitching a budget plan that would do exactly that, along with steep cuts to Medicaid. Democrats are calling it savage and heartless, while administration officials are insisting they are only slowing explosive growth in future years and that current Medicare benefits would remain untouched.
Here are three things to know about the election-year fight on health care spending:
Trump proposed spending $1.6 trillion less on future health care spending, including $451 billion less for Medicare.
On Twitter, two days before releasing his budget, the president said, we will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare. It was a promise he also made in his State of the Union address.
Whether he broke that promise depends upon how you look at it.
Theres no doubt the presidents budget plan would whack away at federal spending on health care over the next 10 years, with an estimated $1.6 trillion reduction, including $451 billion less spent on Medicare and $920 billion less for Medicaid.
Overall, HHS stated, funding levels will be no lower each year than they are today.
Democrats were unmoved.
“Dont get in front of an audience and say Im here to protect Medicare and Social Security and put a budget like this forward,” Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday.
The plan wont impact Medicare benefits though
Republicans Very Much Dislike The Current Cola Measurement
You should understand that the Republican Party doesnt like the current inflationary tether, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers .
The biggest issue Republicans have with the CPI-W is that it doesnt do a very good job of measuring the inflation that seniors are facing, thereby resulting in an inaccurate cost-of-living adjustment each year. Thats because, as the name implies, the CPI-W tracks the spending habits of urban and clerical workers, who in nearly all instances arent receiving a Social Security check. Essentially, seniors annual raise is tied to the spending habits of non-seniors, and that doesnt sit well with anyone in Congress.
In particular, Republicans would like to replace the CPI-W with the Chained CPI. The Chained CPI takes into account the idea of substitution bias, which involves trading down from a pricier good or service to something less expensive if prices go up. For example, if the price of ground beef rises 40%, you might buy pork or chicken instead. The CPI-W does not take into account substitution bias.
Although substitution bias does take into account a real-life purchasing strategy of consumers, the consensus view among pundits is that it would result in lower annual COLAs more years than not, relative to the CPI-W.
Read Also: How Much Is It To Stay In The Trump Hotel
Don’t Miss: How Do I Stream The Patriots Game
No Service Cuts But The Trust Fund Took A Hit
Protecting Medicare was was one of Trump’s earliest campaign pledges. “Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts. Have to do it,” he said in his presidential campaign announcement speech.
So far, the promise of Medicare remains in force. There have been no cuts in services or a change in the government’s responsibility to fund the program.
That said, Medicare’s resources to pay for those services has shrunk, and both Trump and House Republicans have proposed ways to trim Medicare spending over the next decade.
On the resources side, a side effect of the Republican 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act was a loss of tax dollars flowing into Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. That’s the main pot of Medicare money, and the Medicare Trustees forecast in their 2018 report that the fund would run out of money in 2026. A year earlier, they said it would last until 2029.
On Trump’s watch, it lost three years of solvency.
In a presentation at the American Enterprise Institute, a market-oriented think tank, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Paul Spitalnic, said two of the lost years were due to lower than expected wage growth.
But the other lost year came from the Republican tax cuts.
“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 decreased individual tax rates and as a result, there is somewhat less income coming into the trust fund,” Spitalnic said. “That does have an effect of making depletion of the trust fund a year earlier.”
The Republican Obsession With Dismantling Social Security And Medicare
The Republicans are desperate to destroy Social Security and Medicare. These two programs demonstrate government at its best. The federal government runs these two extremely popular programs more efficiently, universally, securely, and effectively than the private sector does with its alternatives or indeed could, no matter how well those private sector programs were designed.
Because Social Security and Medicare are government programs that work so well, the Republican elite with its seemingly religious belief that the private sector is always the best hates them. So obsessed are the Republicans in their desire to eliminate these effective government programs that the very first action that House Republicans took in the new Congress was to adopt a rules package that included a new rule that amounts to a stealth attack on Social Security and Medicare.
The rules package, adopted at the start of every new Congress, sets out how the chamber will operate for the next two years. This years package is already infamous for provisions in the initial version that would have gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics provisions that were ultimately dropped after a massive outcry from the American people. Unnoticed by most was an additional provision, which is one part of the Republican game plan to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
Congressional Republicans, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Tom Price
Also Check: How Many Republicans Are On Welfare
Scott On Social Security Medicare
In the same Fox News Sundayinterview featured in the DSCC ad and tweet, Scott went on to say that he had no intention of eliminating Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Heres whats happening, Scott said. No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what were doing is we dont even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years. I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.
We wrote at the time that Scott went too far in claiming that Medicare will go bankrupt in four years and Social Security in 12 years. Government trustees project that certain Medicare and Social Security trust funds would become depleted by then, but payments would continue, albeit at a reduced rate.
As we said, Scott has not outlined how he would change Social Security and Medicare, and whether that might include a reduction in benefits. But he has not advocated eliminating the programs entirely.
And although Democrats have labeled Scotts plan broadly as the Senate Republicans plan, theres reason to believe it may not have widespread support in the party.
- Categories
‘that Doesn’t Look Like America In 2020’: Mary Trump Blasts The Packed Crowd At The White House
NBC News
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said during his RNC speech Thursday that Democrats want to defund the police and that they want free health care for illegal immigrants.
The first claim is misleading, and the second false. Though some progressives within the Democratic Party do support calls to “defund the police,” the official Democratic Party platform, approved last week, includes no reference to it. And, as NBC News has pointed out on the the first, second and third nights of the RNC, Joe Biden, the party’s nominee, does not support defunding the police. He has explicitly said so on multiple occasions.
NBC News has an explainer on the different and sometimes overlapping proposals from activists on how to address police violence here.
Additionally, while some on the left have called for free health care for undocumented immigrants, Biden has not. He supports allowing undocumented immigrants to purchase health care with their own money, they would not be eligible for taxpayer-funded subsidies. The official Democratic Party platform calls for extending Affordable Care Act coverage to Dreamers, and working with Congress to lift the five-year waiting period for Medicaid and Childrens Health Insurance Program eligibility for low-income, lawfully present immigrants.
McConnell also said Democrats want to make Washington, D.C., Americas 51st state.
Don’t Miss: Ny Jets Vs Patriots Tickets
The Republican Argument Hinges On Such A Tortured Interpretation Of The 2017 Tax Law That The Justices Should Not Have To Give It The Time Of Day
The Supreme Court may never consider a more important case in a more precarious national moment than the one that 18 Republican states and President Donald Trump’s Justice Department have forced onto the docket this fall. Tens of millions of Americans could lose their access to health care and hundreds of millions could lose health care protections theyve never needed more, as a result of the determination to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
If the GOP is successful, the case would have us return to the days when access to health insurance is no longer guaranteed and insurance companies decide who and what to cover and how much to charge. Elements of the ACA that are part of the fabric of our country would all be gone protected coverage for preexisting conditions, a ban on lifetime coverage limits, allowing children to remain on parents plans until age 26, free preventive benefits, and requiring coverage for essential services like mental health and prescription drugs.
Such a profound case, with such a drastic and long lasting impact, should not be considered lightly at any time. This argument hinges on such a tortured interpretation of the 2017 tax law that the justices should not have to give it the time of day. The claim from the plaintiffs and supported by the Trump administration is that when Congress passed the tax cut law and zeroed out the tax penalty for refusing to buy ACA coverage, they actually instead intended to get rid of the entire ACA.
