After a staggering 15 rounds of voting for a new Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) has narrowly clinched victory. But he essentially had to bet the House (pun intended!) to get there.

Speaker McCarthy had to negotiate with the extreme right in the Republican party to win the coveted speakership. Make no mistake, these are hardliners who are more worried about advancing their own personal agendas than doing what’s right for America’s workers and retirees like you.

This small but powerful faction of the Republican Party will now drive the GOP agenda in the House. And some of these hard-right politicians are vowing to reduce government spending by taking an ax to your earned Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Of course, many of these politicians were noticeably quiet about deficits and debt during the Trump years when government spending soared in large part because of the unpaid-for Trump-GOP tax law that cost $2 trillion and gave massive tax cuts primarily to the wealthy and huge corporations.

So while we can only guess the specific concessions Speaker McCarthy had to make to clinch his victory, we know that some of these giveaways have to do with conditions these hardliners set on raising or suspending the debt ceiling. The extreme-right politicians are expected to balk at the idea of voting for a “clean” debt ceiling bill — basically they plan to risk a government default (and the global economic chaos it would cause) to extort severe cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Yet, during the Trump administration, the debt ceiling was raised three times—hypocrisy at its best!

Allowing our government to default on its financial obligations, which hardliners are promising to do, would cripple our nation’s economy and hold up Social Security and Medicare payments for seniors.

It’s clear we’ve entered a new era in deal-making on Capitol Hill and I’m deeply concerned Social Security and Medicare will pay the price.

Sincerely,

Max Richtman
President & CEO