Joining his Republican colleagues, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is making clear Republicans are willing to threaten the financial security of our economy to gut Social Security and Medicare. 

In a new interview, McCarthy threatened to put the financial stability of the economy at risk if Republicans take the majority in November.

Kevin McCarthy: “You can’t just continue down the path to keep spending and adding to the debt. And if people want to make a debt ceiling [for a longer period of time], just like anything else, there comes a point in time where, okay, we’ll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior. We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right? And we should seriously sit together and [figure out] where can we eliminate some waste? Where can we make the economy grow stronger?”

In what should have been a softball question, McCarthy did not rule out using cuts to Social Security and Medicare as a bargaining chip.

Punchbowl: “We asked McCarthy if he intended to try to reform entitlements as part of the debt ceiling debate. McCarthy said he wouldn’t ‘predetermine’ anything.”

When Republicans threatened a stunt over the debt ceiling in 2021, it was estimated that a credit default would have cost up to 6 million jobs and wiped out $15 trillion in household wealth.

The Washington Post: “Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, found that a prolonged impasse over the debt ceiling would cost the U.S. economy up to 6 million jobs, wipe out as much as $15 trillion in household wealth, and send the unemployment rate surging to roughly 9 percent from around 5 percent.”

But Republicans did not have a problem raising the debt ceiling THREE TIMES during Trump’s presidency.

Punchbowl: “We reminded McCarthy that he didn’t pitch these debt limit battles during the Trump era, during which the GOP ran up $7 trillion in new debt in only four years, including pandemic relief funding. Congress raised the debt ceiling three times during Trump’s presidency. Republicans only hold the borrowing cap hostage when Democrats are in the White House. McCarthy countered that President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have spent too much money, in his view.”

And McCarthy is not the only Republican threatening to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Senator Rick Scott and the Republican Study Committee have put out plans to do just that. 

Washington Post Opinion: “[Rick] Scott’s plan would also sunset — eliminate — all federal legislation over five years, under the (risky) assumption that worthy laws would be reenacted. That could mean an end to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, everything else mentioned above — and potentially more.”

NBC News: “The Republican Study Committee, a large group of House conservatives, proposed a budget in June that would incrementally raise the retirement age to collect Social Security, based on changing life spans, and lower benefits…”