During a town hall on Monday, Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI) spoke about the Trump Administration's cuts to Social Security.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00One obvious topic that might be in a lot of people's minds, Medicaid, Social Security.
00:06What are your thoughts on those programs, where they stand, what you're worried about, are the worries real?
00:13Well, look, I think to Social Security, I sort of hear what Senator Reid and Senator Whitehouse just said.
00:22If you break the foundation, you can say, well, this thing is unstable.
00:32And that's part of the mission in the dismantling and the destabilizing actions that they've had at the Social Security Administration.
00:41All right, let's make everybody verify their eligibility in person.
00:46Now they backtracked from that, but that was very loud.
00:50That was a statement saying, you know, we don't trust you.
00:56They call recipients, people who complain about the system, fraudsters.
01:02I'm not making that up, you know.
01:04And then they say, we're going to fire a bunch of people who answer the phones.
01:09We're going to make it harder to actually be serviced.
01:14And then, you know, you have uncertainty.
01:17Am I going to get my check this month?
01:19Think about the number of times you had your employer be a day late in paying you and what that does, the destabilizing effect of that.
01:32Now, this is a deserved, earned benefit.
01:36Our offices every single week are getting calls before the Trump Administration about challenges that people have with Social Security.
01:45And this is something that we have had to fund at a higher level to make sure the benefits are effectively delivered before this phone.
01:54But now the Trump Administration is going in the other direction.
01:59And so they are building a rationale for privatization.
02:02They will privatize elements of it, for sure, guaranteed.
02:09And this is all a prelude to what they want to do to Social Security.
02:14We should be doing the opposite, funding it at a higher level.
02:17Don't get, you know, Senator Whitehouse has a piece of legislation in the Senate.
02:21I'm on a co-sponsor of legislation in the House to do what we should do by having the wealthy pay more, bump that cap on the payroll tax up further.
02:32And get it done and extend the life of the trust fund.
02:41On Medicaid, right, you see them talking about it in a very circumspect way.
02:49Let's talk about work requirements, able-bodied people.
02:53That is, if you hear that, that is a signal that they are trying to cut benefits.
02:58When we know a significant part of the Medicaid population is that expansion universe who got it because of the Affordable Care Act.
03:06And Senator Whitehouse ran down the population, but you've got folks on disabilities.
03:10With disabilities, you have the pregnant women.
03:13You have so many of our kids, 40% of them.
03:17Behavioral health services, on and on and on.
03:20But why they go to it is because it's a big pot of money for them.
03:24They've got dollar signs in their eyes.
03:26There's no way they achieve, on paper, what they want to do, on top of borrowing trillions for tax cuts, if they don't go after Medicaid.
03:36And so that's, we have to keep our eyes on the prize.
03:38When the senator talks about reconciliation, that is the Super Bowl here for them.
03:44And so I am worried.
03:46We're definitely worried about it.
03:47And that's why almost every single day that we've been in the state since they put out this plan, we all are doing something on this topic because it is the most important topic right now.