Republicans really wish President JOE BIDEN would stop claiming they’re trying to cut Medicare and Social Security. They aren’t pushing a bill that would do anything of the sort, many have noted. House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY continues to make it clear that, in terms of debt ceiling negotiations, those two programs are “off the table.” Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL has said the same. But Biden is not about to stop. The line of attack, which is still rippling through the news cycle a week after Biden’s State of the Union address, is expected to figure prominently in his likely reelection campaign, administration officials say. And it’s not just going to be tied back to the GOP plan Florida Sen. RICK SCOTT put forth last year that called for sunsetting all federal programs every five years. When the president traveled to Tampa last week, it was a deliberate effort to plant a flag on the issue in a state with a huge population of seniors. Scott’s plan may have been part of the pretext. But the backdrop was the home turf of Gov. RON DESANTIS, seen as an early GOP presidential frontrunner. Whether DeSantis ends up the nominee is immaterial though. Multiple Biden aides have made clear that this line of argument will continue into next year’s campaign no matter which Republican emerges from a potentially crowded field. Because, as Biden world sees it, all of the leading Republicans likely to be vying for the party’s nomination are vulnerable on this issue, even DONALD TRUMP. “They are on the wrong side of the argument on Medicare across the board,” one senior Biden aide told West Wing Playbook. “They voted against lower prescription drug prices, they voted against negotiating with big pharma companies, and they have no plan to make Medicare more solvent except to cut benefits.” The writer JOSH BARRO was early to get to this spot, recognizing in a post the day after Biden’s State of the Union – in which the president’s assertion that Republicans wanted to cut entitlements baited many of them to disavow the position in real time – how the attack could be a sticky one against DeSantis. As a member of Congress in 2013 and 2014, DeSantis voted for GOP budget proposals drawn up by former Rep. PAUL RYAN that called for cutting both Social Security and Medicare. The 2013 proposal would have raised the qualifying age for both programs to 70. “I support what Ryan is trying to do in terms of reforming entitlements,” DeSantis said during a House candidate forum in August 2012. In an interview with CNN’s “Early Start” program a few months later, DeSantis also spoke about wanting to make Medicare more efficient. “I think we should try to look at entitlements, look at restructuring Medicare so it’s delivering services at a lower cost to the taxpayer,” he said. DeSantis was hardly alone among Republicans at the time. Some of his contemporaries in Congress and former governors who now harbor presidential aspirations of their own, including MIKE POMPEO, TIM SCOTT, MIKE PENCE and NIKKI HALEY, who launched her campaign Tuesday, have made similar comments that DNC officials are waiting to deploy. The DNC’s AMMAR MOUSSA, who leads the organization’s rapid response arm, has wasted little time hammering Haley for her past support for entitlement cuts. In fact, he tweeted a low-resolution clip of Haley’s 2010 interview with Fox News, where she calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, eight times in 48 hours from Sunday to Tuesday. Trump, notably, did the same shortly after Haley formally announced her candidacy today. But Biden world believes the former president has vulnerabilities on this front, too, even as his presidential campaigns included calls to preserve Social Security and Medicare. That’s because all four budgets Trump proposed while in office included cuts to entitlement programs. Trump’s first director of the Office of Management and Budget, MICK MULVANEY, seemingly bragged to Politico in 2017 about how he duped Trump into agreeing to the very cuts he vowed to block. In his final year in office, Trump also suspended the payroll tax amid the Covid-19 pandemic and threatened to do away with it altogether. The tax is the main funding source for Social Security. That may all make for good political fodder. But Biden has his vulnerabilities too. He was vice president to BARACK OBAMA when that White House trumpeted its own suspension of the payroll tax. And amid debt ceiling negotiations with former House Speaker JOHN BOEHNER the previous year, Obama and Biden also agreed to cut trillions from Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare as part of a framework for a larger deal that also would have raised taxes. The deal never ended up passing. Republicans aren’t likely to let those moments go down the memory hole. Already, they have seized on the Biden administration’s proposed changes to Medicare Advantage, the growing market for private insurance plans, to accuse the president of trying to “cut Medicare.” MESSAGE US — Are you ALICIA MOLT-WEST, special assistant to the president and House legislative affairs liaison? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
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