Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Friday that a bipartisan commission-setting bill that would recommend changes to address the impending insolvency in federal trust funds will be in the Republicans’ new coronavirus package. . among Democrats who denounced it as a “back door cut” for Medicare and Social Security, while others praised it as a step to protect popular programs.
Among those who criticized McConnell’s decision to include the TRUST Act, written by Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, and co-sponsored by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, was Maya R. Cummings, activist and widow of the deceased representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
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“@ senatemajldr The TRUST Act is a back door mechanism to accelerate cuts to Social Security (sic) and Medicare through unaccountable Committees,” he said in a tweet. “Why include it in a coronavirus rescue bill? Seniors, people with disabilities, and dependents deserve better from Congress.”
The bill, in addition to Medicare and Social Security, would also address the Federal Highway Trust Fund.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement that Romney’s bill “will result in far-reaching cuts to Social and Medicare, that is the intent of the bill. Of law”.
In this video image, Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, speaks in the Senate about the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump at the United States Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, February 5, 2020. The Senate will vote on articles of impeachment on Wednesday afternoon. (Senate Television via AP)
He added: “The legislation establishes closed-door commissions to accelerate the destruction of these programs … The last thing Americans in distress need right now is a secret panel designed to cut their profits and further undermine their economic security.”
But the nonpartisan Oversight Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) called Neal’s statement “false and misleading,” saying the cuts would not come immediately as Neal said and that the bill instead “calls for solutions. long-term for their main trust funds. ” in the coming decades “and that the bill” would not mention any policy change directly, “only that it creates commissions to get legislators” to join together and agree on the necessary reforms. “
He also noted that any committee recommendation would still have to overcome traditional legislative hurdles to become a “majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate” law.
CRFB President Maya McGuineas, in a statement supporting the inclusion of the bill in the coronavirus package, emphasized the serious state of federal trust funds.
“Politicians cannot continue to ignore the finances of some of the biggest government programs. We have known that these programs have struggled for years, and the current economic crisis has only made matters worse,” he said. “The highway trust fund is likely to run out of reserves next year, and Social Security is only a decade behind. When today’s youngest retirees turn 73, they can expect a sharp 23 percent cut in their Insurance benefits Social under current law. More time about saving these programs for our grandchildren. Our grandparents’ benefits are vulnerable. “
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Other center law expert groups also endorsed the TRUST Act, including the R Street Institute, whose Vice President for Research Associations, Kevin Kosar, said, “Any additional spending to mitigate the economic effects of the pandemic must be accompanied by provisions to address longer “term deficits” such as the TRUST Act.
And Manhattan Institute principal member Brandon Reidl said he is “happy to hear” that the TRUST Act is in the Republican plan and noted that it does not make reforms “during the recession.”
There is a long way to go before Congress before a final coronavirus relief bill is passed. The Senate Republican proposal, which has yet to be fully tabled and is controversial even within its own committee, will likely struggle to win the approval of enough Senate Democrats to pass without significant change. Then the Democrat-controlled House, which previously passed a $ 3 trillion bill that Republicans criticized as a wish list of liberal priorities, would have to pass anything that comes out of the Senate without changing it before the package I got to the president’s desk.
