Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) warned CNN's Jim Sciutto that Republicans could very well slash critical programs like Social Security and Medicare in the next Congress — but Sciutto wanted to know what exactly Democrats plan to do about it.
"So let's talk about what comes next, because Republicans in their private meeting, they made a handshake agreement to cut $2.5 trillion in spending next year when they presumably hope to raise the debt limit to get to that figure," said Sciutto. "It strikes me and a lot of others that entitlements could be endangered. Does this mean that Republicans, despite what they say, are going to propose cuts to Medicare and Social Security, perhaps Medicaid?"
"The Democrats view this as a first assault on Social Security and Medicare of the 119th Congress," said Raskin. "They were really beginning plans to try to dismantle basic entitlements that the American people have built up and paid into over the years. And so we know that they would much rather have a big tax cut for the wealthy. The last tax cut they did gave 83 percent of their benefits to the richest Americans. And so they want to repeat that while undermining Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, anything that is an expression of solidarity among people who live in different classes."
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"So what are you going to do about that?" said Sciutto, noting that the GOP will have unified control of Congress and intends to pass much of their budgetary agenda through reconciliation, which cannot be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. "Do Democrats have a way to stop them from making such cuts?"
"We ... think that there might be some reason within at least a handful of Republicans left," replied Raskin. "And remember, after three Republicans leave right at the beginning of the new Congress, including Matt Gaetz and Elise Stefanik, there's going to be a one-vote majority. They cannot afford to lose one vote, whether that's to political defection or illness or even a complete divorce from the caucus. Already they've lost one member, Victoria Spartz from Indiana, who said ... she's not caucusing with them. So it's a famously divisive and cannibalistic group of people. Now they're talking about toppling Mike Johnson."
The upshot, Raskin concluded, is that "we don't think we're going to have a hard time, again, injecting ourselves in a completely unified way, as we did under the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries over the last couple of days, to assert the interests of the American people."
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