Republicans admit they’ll slash Medicare, Social Security to pay for their tax cuts




Slowly but surely, Republicans that supported the trillion dollar Trump tax bill are revealing their true motivations: slashing Medicare and Social Security.

During a Sunday interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) urged entitlement reform as the deficit continues to balloon as a result of the GOP tax cuts.

“I do think we need to deal with some of our spending,” Stivers said. “We’ve got try to figure out how to spend less.”

Stivers, who also serves as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), is a self-proclaimed “budget hawk” and frequently criticized national debt levels under the Obama administration. Despite his previous trepidation at increasing the deficit, he voted in favor of a costly tax bill that even the White House admitted would not pay for itself over time.

In his interview with CNBC, Stivers admitted this as well saying, “I don’t think that tax cuts, themselves, can grow the economy for 20 or 30 years.”

But Republican politicians did not go into the tax bill vote blind. There were multiple studies released after the bill was drafted that showed massive tax cuts for the wealthy would only add to the deficit.

The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation released a report the week of the tax bill vote that found the GOP bill would lead to a 1.7 percent increase in gross domestic product over the long term and bring in an extra $600 billion in revenue. Even after factoring in that growth, however, the deficit would still total $448 billion over the next decade.

https://thinkprogress.org/republicans-voted-tax-bill-cut-medicare-social-security-pay-488a9bcbba7d/