To understand the resilience of Donald Trump’s influence in the Republican Party, the way he always seems to revive despite scandal, debacle or disgrace, look no further than the contrast between his early policy forays in the 2024 campaign and what two of his prospective challengers are doing. Judging by Trump’s address to the Conservative […]
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Gratitude should lead us to make sure that older Americans can live comfortably in retirement. Solicitude should lead us to do so in ways that do not needlessly leave the next generation less prosperous than it could be. Those should be the terms of our debates about Social Security and Medicare. And they would clearly […]
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To improve America’s retirement system, “the most important policy change is to put Social Security and Medicare on stable financial footing,” a pair of academic economists who have served in Democratic administrations, Martin N. Baily and Benjamin Harris, wrote in a new book, “The Retirement Challenge.” Mr. Baily was the chairman of the White House […]
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“We’re in a total strategic cul-de-sac on the right, and our fiscal warriors and strategists have totally failed in the sense that, point to any cuts we’ve had success-wise since 1997,” Mr. Vought said in an interview. “I actually think that that’s the worst part of the federal spending, because it’s the bureaucracy. Understand the […]
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VIRGINIA BEACH — President Biden accused Republicans of “playing politics” with people’s lives on Tuesday as he tried to strike a contrast between his plans to expand access to health care and Republican efforts to cut into federal programs to reduce the budget deficit. Republicans have not officially said whether their plans to balance the federal […]
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The G.O.P. response to President Biden’s truthful statement that some Republicans want to sunset Medicare and Social Security has been highly gratifying. In other words, the party has reacted with sheer panic — plus a startling lack of message discipline, with both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley saying that actually, yes, they do want to […]
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In his State of the Union speech this month, President Biden pledged to block any reductions in scheduled Social Security and Medicare benefits. He also promised that any tax increases would be limited to families that earn more than $400,000 — roughly the top-earning 2 percent of American families. Together, these promises are almost certainly […]
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The unusual back and forth between President Biden and Republican lawmakers on live television during last week’s State of the Union address kicked off a high-stakes political debate about repairing Social Security and Medicare. The noisy exchange — provoked by Mr. Biden’s charge that some Republicans want to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security — may […]
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WASHINGTON — After a year of criticism, Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, capitulated on Friday and amended his party policy agenda to exempt Social Security and Medicare from his proposal to terminate all federal programs every five years and subject them to congressional review. Mr. Scott said the agenda he issued last February, as […]
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WASHINGTON — President Biden scored an early political point this month in his fight with congressional Republicans over taxes, spending and raising the federal debt limit: He forced Republican leaders to profess, repeatedly, that they will not seek cuts to Social Security and Medicare. In the process, Mr. Biden has effectively steered a debate about […]
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My latest column was about President Biden’s remark that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare (and, indeed, all federal legislation) after five years, and the howls of outrage this has provoked from the G.O.P. and, alas, some mainstream media figures — even though Biden was directly quoting the former chairman of the […]
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Politically, the most crucial moment in President Biden’s State of the Union address was his declaration that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.” Why did he say that? Maybe because Senator Rick Scott, when he was the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a fiscal plan last […]
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If President Biden sometimes sounded a lot like Donald Trump during his State of the Union address, boasting about a record of economic nationalism, the imitation may soon run the other way. Biden’s attacks on congressional Republicans for being allegedly eager to cut Medicare and Social Security were a clear preview of how he hopes […]
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Since he defeated former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, Mr. Biden has had difficulty conjuring a useful political villain, in part because Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. For much of his first year, Mr. Biden seemed to be fighting more with his own party — specifically, Senators Kyrsten Sinema […]
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Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Two years after a Democratic president took office and pushed ambitious policies through Congress, Republicans have regained control of the House. They don’t have the votes required to repeal the president’s achievements, but a quirk of U.S. law — which requires that Congress vote a second time to […]
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