Biden: Social Security Cuts Off the Table in Debt Ceiling Fight

As it stands now, the unofficial projection for default is in June. However, at the end of April, Treasury will likely have a better idea of the revenue picture and may revise the projected default date.

Biden told members of Congress that he’d release his fiscal plan on March 9, and urged Republicans to do the same. “We can sit down together and discuss both plans together,” Biden said, adding that his plan “will lower the deficit by $2 trillion. I won’t cut a single Social Security or Medicare benefit.”

Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League, told ThinkAdvisor in another email Wednesday that “threats of benefit cuts are never smart or effective legislating.”

Senior Citizens League surveys conducted in 2022 of more than 2,000 older Americans “found that 64% want Congress to focus on Social Security solvency approaches that raise tax revenues without benefit cuts,” Johnson said.

A survey underway now by the group, which includes 673 responses, Johnson said, “suggests that 79% of all survey participants think that Social Security payroll tax should be applied to ALL wages AND they support taxation of stock options and other fringe benefits as well.”

The group’s surveys, Johnson relayed, “are evenly divided” among Republicans, Democrats and others.

The Senior Citizens League, Johnson said, “urges members of Congress to turn to their elder constituents and LISTEN to what they are saying!”

Sixty-two percent, Johnson said, “support legislation to prevent delays, non-payment, or automatic cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefit due to the willful failure to come to a federal budget agreement on the debt limit by the deadline.”