Cheat Sheet: McSally’s Record of Risking Medicare and Social Security

Trump’s Latest Threat to Medicare, Social Security Spotlights McSally’s Votes to Cut Billions from Medicare, Openness to Raising the Retirement Age, & Private Accounts for Social Security

Unelected Senator Martha McSally’s long record of support for voucherizing and gutting Medicare and her openness to private Social Security accounts are once again in the spotlight as Donald Trump makes the GOP’s latest threat to gut those programs.

McSally has backed a budget plan that would “gradually change Medicare to a voucher program” — a proposal that the AARP said “shifts costs” onto seniors, and which would cause most beneficiaries to “pay more than under current law.” And McSally has also been open to deeply unpopular plans to raise the retirement age — and she even floated the idea of transitioning Social Security to private investment accounts.

Check out the cheat sheet on McSally’s record of pushing to gut earned benefits programs: 

• 2012: Said she would have supported the FY 2013 Ryan Budget, which would have “shift[ed] substantial costs to Medicare beneficiaries and (with the simultaneous repeal of health reform) [left] many 65- and 66-year olds without any health coverage at all.” [CBPP, 3/28/12]
  
  
  • CBPP: “Starting in 2023, the Ryan budget would raise the eligibility age for Medicare — now 65 — by two months per year until it reaches age 67 in 2034.  It also would repeal health reform.  As a result, many 65- and 66-year olds would have neither Medicare nor access to health reform’s coming health insurance exchanges in which they could buy affordable coverage.” [CBPP, 3/29/12] 

• 2012: Said she wanted to look at Social Security “options to gradually increase the retirement age.” [Greater Catalina Council Forum, 4/2/12] (VIDEO)

• 2012: Floated transitioning Social Security into private investment accounts. [Green Valley News, 4/4/12]

• 2017: Voted for a budget resolution that “propose[d] $473 billion in cuts to Medicare’s baseline spending over a decade and about $1 trillion from Medicaid” [Vote #589, 10/26/17, The Hill, 10/19/17; Congressional Actions, H. Con. Res. 71]

• 2017: Voted for a corporate tax giveaway that spiked the federal deficit, “trimmed a year of solvency from the primary Medicare trust fund and had a negative effect on the Social Security trust fund.” [Politifact, 9/5/18]

“Unelected Senator Martha McSally has spent years trying to undermine Arizonans’ Medicare and Social Security benefits, so it’s no surprise that she is refusing to stand up to her party’s latest threat to put these benefits back on the chopping block,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “Make no mistake — with Medicare and Social Security on the ballot in 2020, Arizonans know that Senator McSally is to blame, and she cannot hide from her toxic record of trying to slash, privatize, and undermine her constituents’ retirement security.”

###