In the News
ICYMI: Rick Scott Calls for Slashing Half the Federal Budget [Florida Phoenix]
Yesterday, the Florida Phoenix reported that Rick Scott called for slashing “half” the federal budget, adding that it’s his “number one thing.” Scott’s proposal would be impossible without drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare — which would spike costs for Florida families and seniors. Scott’s self-serving agenda isn’t new: he wrote the plan to end Social Security and Medicare as we know them:
Click here to read the story. See key excerpts below:
- But could the country still be run efficiently if all federal spending was reduced in half? That’s what the Florida Republican postulated last week in Milwaukee.
- Speaking on the “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton” show, the senator, running for a second term, said, “The number one thing that we have to do is downsize the size of government. The government’s way too big.”
- “The federal government probably needs to be half its size,” he [Scott] added.
- “If you tried to cut the government 50% but not touch Medicare or Social Security, you literally couldn’t do it,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. “The math doesn’t work. And so, if you were really dedicated to cutting the government in half, you would definitionally be cutting Medicare and Social Security.”
- “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans programs make up two-thirds of the non-interest, non-defense portion of the federal budget,” added Josh Bivens, chief economist with left-leaning EPI Action.
- “There are only two ways to interpret this statement from Sen. Scott — he is either calling for huge cuts to these programs or he is too uninformed to know this. He owes it to voters to follow up this statement by either specifying what he wants to cut or studying up and learning how the federal budget works,” [said Bivens].