Last month, the Republican Study Committee which is made up of 100% House Republican leadership and 80% of GOP membership, revealed their plan to initiate cuts to Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act, as well as increasing prescription drug costs.
After the Republican plan was announced, seniors across several states that rely on Medicare and are recipients of the Social Security promised investment were on hand at press conferences across the nation where momentum is gathering against GOP cuts to America’s vital programs.
In Arizona, President Biden told attendees at the El Portal restaurant in Phoenix during a campaign press conference that he plans to protect systems like Social Security and Medicare—while Trump is now trying to employ damage control after repeatedly promising he would make cuts.
Now the Republican House majority is making good on its promise to slash the essential programs.
President Biden also highlighted his campaign manager Julia Chávez Rodriguez, granddaughter of famed labor activist and Yuma native Cesar Chavez, as a pillar in his administration that “looks like America” — along with his promise to protect Social Security—Biden repeated his pledge, made back on the campaign trail, to diversify the cabinet to better serve all of America’s marginalized communities.
Sofia Garcia told Northeast Valley News that she relies on Social Security and has been working her entire life and has paid into a “wonderful” retirement security plan.
“Any money they cut from my checks will cost me a great deal because I already must live on a very low income and I always paid my share from my work checks,” Garcia said.
With nearly 36% of Arizona’s residents age 50 or older, or, more than 2.5 million people, Arizonans do not support cuts or “privatization” to Social Security and slashes to Medicare.
Carloyn Monson, 68, a retired Valley nurse, told Northeast Valley that the proposed GOP plan to cut Social Security and Medicare is “criminal.”
“It’s criminal to target a vulnerable group of people such as our senior citizens. Many of us depend on Social Security for our income when we retire, or at least part of it, and we also depend on Medicare for our health insurance,” Monson said.
Monson added that the cost for Medicare has already gone up $35 in the past two years.
“I don’t know how many more hits the senior population can take.”
Even though Monson doesn’t use the Affordable Care Act herself, she believes we must keep it in place.
“There are many people out there that need this access to insurance, and for some, this is the only access they have. If they do away with Medicare and cut Social Security you’re gonna have a whole senior population that’s living below poverty and will need ACCHHS, Medicaid, food stamps and other services. So this is a double whammy,” Monson said.
During President Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address he made clear he would seek to prevent any attempts to reduce those programs.
“If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare, or raise the retirement age, I will stop you,” Biden said.
Pennsylvania Seniors and Retirees Across Nation Rally Against Social Security and Medicare Cuts
“I am a recipient of Medicare and Social Security. I can guarantee you, all of my working life, my husband and I contributed to those two programs with the hope and belief that we would be able to benefit from them when it was our time to retire,” Mary Lou Alsentzer of Lancaster said during a Wednesday press conference in Harrisburg. “We cannot allow Donald Trump to take away one more thing. We the people have to stand up.”
William Byrnes, a senior citizen and Social Security recipient who lives in Wilkes-Barre, reportedly told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star during a Tuesday press conference in Luzerne that he started paying into the Social Security system when he was a teenager in 1966.
“One of the things that my wife and I dread is that one medical quote that can wipe you out,” Byrnes said. “Donald Trump has a history of stiffing the people who work for him, it’s completely in character for him to be stiffing the American people on the benefits that we have contributed to and paid for out of the labor of our lifetime.”
In a swing state like Pennsylvania, where 20% of the population is 65 or older, a suggestion of cutting Social Security would seem to be politically unwise.
“More than 2 million Pennsylvanians rely on Social Security and Medicare, and Donald Trump wants to leave them with fewer benefits and instead give away more tax cuts to his wealthy friends and big corporations,” Pennsylvania state Rep Patty Kim (D-Dauphin) said at the Harrisburg press conference last Wednesday.
Patricia Ford of Philadelphia, 72, remembers a time in the not-too-distant past when politicians would barely discuss Social Security, much less threaten to make cuts, because it didn’t make sense: Senior citizens, many of whom rely on Social Security income, are considered reliable voters, and would respond at the voting booth.
“I think about the possibility of cuts to Social Security, and it’s just so ridiculous,” Ford reportedly told the Capital-Star. She said she’s worked since age 16, and doesn’t want her children to have to take care of her, that she should be able to take care of herself. “If this issue was brought up and talked about over and over, I believe a lot of seniors would come out to vote.”
She said she was not entirely surprised, however, to learn that former President Donald Trump had appeared to open the door to making cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.
Trump and his campaign have tried to reframe or walk back his previous comments, saying the former president was focused on “cutting waste.”
But the Biden campaign is mobilizing voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere for press conferences where seniors and other recipients of Social Security benefits speak about what cuts to the program would mean for them.
