On my epitaph, it'll be several things listed, but one of them will be: Worked with others to fix Social Security. I'm here to do something, not to be something. "It will become fodder for somebody running for reelection who would rather be irresponsible with the future of the United States, as opposed to being honest with the American people and coming up with an innovative solution." "Until a president chooses to show leadership, there's no reason to have a hearing," he said. While it is no secret to what Cassidy is working on, there's also no official legislative text, and no plans to have any hearings. "I could give you a list of probably 50 different entities on the right and the left that we went to speak to to either build support or to learn from them," he said. Come up with a better option.' " Seeking political consensusĬassidy and his staff have been working Washington channels through lobbying shops, think tanks and economic gurus to get feedback and make changes as they go, all in the name of building that consensus. His message to skeptics? "I just tell people, 'You may not like our plan. "Then you need political consensus," he admitted. So why does it keep coming up?Ĭassidy concedes his plan only partially solves the solvency problem - it does not address the tougher questions about raising taxes or the retirement age, but he said at a minimum it will not raise taxes on seniors or affect anyone close to retirement. Politics Republicans say they won't cut Social Security. "And we have the leading presidential candidates acting like there's not a problem." "If I sound aggravated as heck, we've got a program that's going insolvent in eight to nine years," Cassidy said, noting the resulting cut could see poverty among the elderly nearly double. Allowing the cuts should be the third rail."Ĭassidy is an equal opportunity critic of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump - currently the frontrunner for the GOP nomination - because both men are campaigning to protect Social Security but not offering much of anything on how they plan to do it. "The third rail should be that you're going to sit passively while the program goes insolvent, at which points benefits are cut," the Louisiana Republican, 66, told NPR in an interview in his Senate office. In other words: Anyone who tries to touch it, gets burned. Bill Cassidy, a gastroenterologist by trade, is comfortable doing uncomfortable things, so it's no surprise he's trying to lead an effort in Congress to protect Social Security, commonly referred to as the "third rail" of American politics. Bill Cassidy sits for an NPR interview in Washington, D.C., on May 10. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.Sen. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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