Hi,

Kevin McCarthy and the GOP have made it clear: Republicans are ready to make cuts to Medicare and Social Security.1,2 Now that the GOP has control of the House, they can use a debt ceiling fight to try to make cuts to America’s social safety net.

We’ve seen Republicans use this playbook to try and cut Medicare and Social Security before, but President Biden and Democrats in Congress must not give in to GOP demands.

Tell President Biden: Demand a clean debt ceiling increase without cuts to the social safety net!

Raising the debt limit used to be a formality, now it’s another thing the GOP has hijacked for its own extreme conservative policy objective.

The debt limit has no effect on federal spending or the amount we need to borrow, it solely restricts the Treasury Department’s ability to honor our government’s financial commitments.3 That means our government would be unable to pay for the programs and services that Congress has already approved — defaulting on our debts and potentially causing an economic crisis.

Republicans hate that Social Security works. It is a model of a simple, universal, and overwhelmingly popular government program. Our Social Security system puts the lie to Republican insistence that private corporations are more efficient than what we can do together.

But the GOP is ready to use the debt ceiling to try to ruin Social Security. We can’t let them.

President Biden must make it clear: Raising the debt ceiling is the basic minimum that we expect from Congress. There can be no negotiation over Medicare and Social Security.

Thanks for taking action,

Tihi and the team at Demand Progress

Sources:

  1. Bloomberg News, “Entitlement, Spending Cap Plans Linked by GOP to Debt-Limit Deal,” October 11, 2022.
  2. Washington Post, “GOP to use debt limit to force spending cuts, McCarthy says” October 18, 2022.
  3. House Budget Democrats, “Why Congress Needs to Abolish the Debt Limit” February 11, 2022.

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