New House GOP Budget Includes Fiscal Commission to Mull Social Security Cuts

The House Budget Committee released Wednesday its fiscal 2025 budget, which includes a bipartisan fiscal commission to examine “fast tracking” potential cuts to Social Security and other entitlements. The Budget Committee passed the resolution Thursday.

The GOP budget resolution was reported out of committee with support from every Republican present, while every Democrat voted against it.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said Thursday in a statement that “this budget includes a so-called ‘fiscal commission,’ which the White House has accurately referred to as a death panel for Social Security and Medicare. The commission is designed to slash vital earned benefits through a fast-track, closed-door process, intended to allow Republicans to avoid political accountability.”

Altman added: “Every Republican who voted for this budget voted to cut Social Security and Medicare. During the mark-up, Democrats proposed numerous amendments to protect Social Security and Medicare. Republicans voted down all of them.”

The House budget resolution “will be DOA in the Senate,” Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told ThinkAdvisor Wednesday in an email. The GOP budget “is just a way for the House [Republicans] to keep the fiscal commission alive,” he said.

The GOP budget cites the House Budget Committee’s Jan. 18 vote to advance H.R. 5779, the Fiscal Commission Act of 2023, legislation that would set up a fiscal commission to address the nation’s national debt.

“It is the policy of this concurrent resolution that the House of Representatives recommends the creation of a bipartisan fiscal commission, consistent with H.R. 5779, the Fiscal Commission Act of 2024, ordered reported by the Committee on the Budget,” the House GOP budget states.

Section 414 of the budget states that the United States “faces a significant debt crisis, with the national debt currently exceeding $34 trillion,” and that “this debt poses a significant risk to the country’s long-term fiscal sustainability, with implications for future generations.”

The drivers of U.S. debt include “entitlement spending such as Social Security and Medicare,” the budget states.

Altman said the House Republican budget resolution “should be a wake-up call for all Americans. In addition to slashing programs the American people depend on, it creates a death panel commission for Social Security, even though Social Security (as Republicans have historically understood) doesn’t add a penny to the deficit.”

Added Altman: “Seventy percent of voters (including 70% of Republican voters) reject the idea of a closed-door fiscal commission. An overwhelming 92% of voters reject the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare. This budget is written to cater to billionaire donors, not voters.”