After it received bipartisan criticism and was called out during the president's State of the Union address, the proposal by Sen. Rick Scott to put all federal programs on a five-year limit has been changed. The Republican's "Rescue America" plan now lists the "specific exceptions of Social Security, Medicare, national security, veterans benefits, and other essential services," CNN reports. The plan had made no exceptions, which President Biden pointed out in his address to Congress and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke out against later. The original proposal says, "If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."
Despite that, Scott said requiring Social Security and Medicaid to be approved by Congress every five years was not his intent. In an op-ed piece published Friday, per the Hill, he blamed the criticism on politicians who are "lying to you every chance they get." Biden lied about the plan and McConnell was "well aware of that," Scott wrote in the Washington Examiner. He'd made another revision that had been attacked by both parties before, dropping a provision requiring every American to pay at least some federal income tax. That could have forced people whose income is below the tax threshold to pay.
Biden's raising of the matter in his speech to Congress brought shouts of "liar" from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans. On Friday, a White House spokesman congratulated Scott for joining other Republicans in "acknowledging that they have, in fact, been attempting to put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block," per the Washington Post. McConnell told an interviewer earlier this month: "It's clearly the Rick Scott plan. It is not the Republican plan." (More Rick Scott stories.)
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