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

Trump’s Latest Threat to Medicare, Social Security Spotlights Perdue’s Votes to Cut Billions from Medicare & Plan to Put Programs on the Chopping Block

Senator David Perdue’s long record of pushing to gut earned benefit programs like Medicare and Social Security is once again in the spotlight as Donald Trump makes the GOP’s latest threat to gut those programs. He’s voted for budget plans that would have cut Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars, and one of his signature legislative proposals would put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.

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

• 2015: Voted for a budget that called on Medicare to be subjected to “$430 billion in spending cuts without explaining where they would be made.” [Senate Vote 171, 5/5/15; Conference Report, 4/29/15; Bloomberg, 3/27/15; Congressional Actions, S. Con. Res. 11]

• 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” [Senate Vote 245,10/19/17; 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]

• 2018: Suggested changing “the benefit size” of Social Security as a way of shoring up the program. [CSPAN’s The Weekly, 00:09:45, 4/20/18] (AUDIO)

• 2019: Called to “cut redundant spending where we can” which he said came from mandatory spending like Social Security and Medicare. [Perdue CPAC Speech, 00:10:01,  2/28/19] (VIDEO)

• 2019: Revived a proposal to “switch mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare to discretionary programs funded by annual bills passed by Congress.” [The Hill, 6/12/19]

“Senator David Perdue has spent years backing proposals that would gut Georgians’ earned benefits programs like Medicare and Social Security, so it’s no surprise that he is refusing to stand up to his 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, Georgians know that Senator Perdue is to blame, and he cannot hide from his toxic record of trying to undermine his constituents’ retirement security.”

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