New Bill Cuts IRS Funding to Boost Social Security, Medicare

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has introduced legislation that would establish a new Senate rule requiring two-thirds vote on any legislation cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits and would redirect part of the $80 billion IRS funding boost under the Inflation Reduction Act to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

The bill, the Protect Our Seniors Act, also establishes a “Keep Medicare Savings in Medicare” requirement, Scott said.

“That means that if any bill makes changes to Medicare that result in a ‘savings’ every dollar of those savings must remain in Medicare and are prohibited from being used to fund woke projects as Democrats have recently done in their so-called Inflation Reduction Act,” Scott said.

The Inflation Reduction Act gave the IRS a 10-year budget boost of about $25 billion for operational support and $47 billion for enforcement. House Republicans have been seeking to repeal this funding since their first vote as the majority in the chamber.

As Scott explained, his bill would:

• Rescind funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for 87,000 new IRS agents and redirect those funds to the Medicare and Social Security Administration trust funds.
• Create a budget point of order, and require a two-thirds vote, against any legislation that the Congressional Budget Office determines would reduce existing Medicare and Social Security benefits.
• Amend CBO scoring laws such that savings to Medicare cannot be used to offset or pay for spending outside of Medicare.

The proposal comes after Biden, in his State of the Union address and other speeches, criticized a proposal by Scott that would require all federal legislation to be reauthorized every five years. Scott later amended the plan, saying it was never intended to apply to Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security Advocates Respond

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, told ThinkAdvisor in an email that the group is “pleased that under pressure from President Biden, Senator Scott is backing away from his plan to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years.”

Scott’s plan “to sunset all other federal legislation would still put many other programs that are essential to seniors in grave danger, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Altman said.

While the bill’s call to require a two-thirds vote in the Senate to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits “is a positive step,” Altman relayed, it’s “not a huge change since current law already requires 60% of the Senate for a vote” to cut Social Security or Medicare.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare agreed that Scott’s bill “is an attempt at damage control after the backlash from his 2022 proposal to sunset federal programs after five years.”

Meanwhile, the Committee added, “we are not sure what this new bill would truly accomplish for seniors. Changes to Social Security already require a supermajority in the U.S. Senate. We wonder also whether the bill leaves open to interpretation exactly what constitutes a ‘benefit reduction.’”

Republicans, the committee stated, “continue to insist that their proposals would not ‘cut’ seniors’ earned benefits, but many of them patently would — including raising the retirement age, adopting a more miserly [cost-of-living adjustment] formula, means testing benefits, or gambling the Social Security trust fund on Wall Street” by privatizing Social Security.

Altman noted that Scott’s bill does not mention the House, “where 156 of his Republican colleagues have signed onto a budget that would make massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, including raising the full retirement age to 70.”

Altman suggested Scott “update his bill to include a two-thirds threshold in the U.S. House,” or “simply sign onto” the Protect Social Security and Medicare Act, introduced in early February by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., which would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress.

Cutting the IRS’ budget, meanwhile, “would end up costing the government more money in lost revenue from wealthy tax cheats than it saves,” Altman opined.