Democrats are promoting a "typical red herring" with claims that the Republican Study Committee's fiscal year 2023 budget calls for cuts in Social Security, raising the retirement age to 70, and cuts to the Medicare program, as their claims are "not something we proposed," House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said Sunday.
"We proposed strengthening, and shoring up Medicare and Social Security, which are both headed for bankruptcy if we do nothing," the Louisiana Republican said on "Fox News Sunday." "The Democrats want to make it worse."
For example, he said that the Democrats passed legislation to "raid money out of Social Security," but "instead of making programs less stable, what we want to do is shore them up."
One way to shore up the program is to get more people back to work so they can pay into the programs, he added, but Democrats, once gaining control of Congress and the White House, started "paying people not to work and to see more of the welfare programs where you used to have work requirements in place."
Democrats are also passing bills to increase taxes, including the Inflation Reduction Act, which will "raise over $730 billion in new taxes and more than double the size of the IRS" by adding 87,000 agents to "target hard-working families," the congressman said.
"The Joint Committee on Taxation confirmed they're going after people making less than $200,000 a year, which is a violation of the White House's promise," he added.
Meanwhile, new polling cited by the morning program indicates that when people are asked whether they prefer a Democrat congressional candidate or a Republican, the Democrats came out three points ahead. Further, many respondents said they are not familiar with the House Republicans' "Commitment to America" policy document.
But when asked if this means the Republicans have a messaging issue, Scalise did not agree.
"We just rolled this out," he said about the GOP's "commitment" document.
"I have been to a lot of districts the last few weeks since we rolled it out in Pittsburgh and people have responded very positively to it," Scalise said.
Further, the party has "phenomenal candidates," said Scalise, predicting that "we're going to win races in a lot of places you haven't seen," including in Oregon, Washington state, Maine, and more.
Scalise also on Sunday slammed the White House for bragging that gas prices are lower, he continued, when they are 60% higher than when Biden took office and "shut off American energy production."
"He begged Russia, he begged Venezuela, and other countries to produce oil when we should be producing it in America," said Scalise. "We do it cleaner than anywhere else. And by the way, if we produce more energy in America, we would be lowering energy costs like we had two years ago."
The congressman on Sunday also rejected an argument from Pelosi, who said that he co-sponsored a GOP bill stating that life begins at conception, which would criminalize all abortions after the moment of fertilization, with no exceptions.
"I am not a co-sponsor of that," Scalise said. "I am a sponsor of the Born-Alive act. If a baby is born alive outside the womb, you can't murder that baby and call it abortion…most Americans, including people that identify as pro-choice, think it is radically extreme and don't want that to be the case."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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