Common sense suggests Sen. Rick Scott should avoid talking about Medicare as much as possible. After all, the Florida Republican helped oversee a company that committed Medicare fraud on a massive and historic scale.
What’s more, Scott has unveiled a far-right blueprint of his policy priorities, which includes a provision that would put all government programs, including Medicare, up for renewal every five years, necessarily putting their futures on unstable and uncertain ground. (As regular readers know, Scott has said he wants to initiate “a conversation” about major changes to Medicare, which is generally a polite euphemism Republicans use when pushing for benefit cuts.)
It was against this backdrop that the GOP senator was on CNN yesterday, where host Dana Bash asked him for a yes-or-no answer to a simple question: “Do Republicans want to cut Medicare and/or Social Security?” Scott’s response was amazing in its duplicity:
“Absolutely not. And you know the Democrats just cut $280 billion — all Democrats in the Senate and House voted to cut $280 billion out of Medicare just two months ago. And then they want to say Republicans want to cut something? Democrats have done this.”
At this point, I could spend several paragraphs setting the record straight about Republicans and their plans to cut both Social Security and Medicare, but since we explored that in some detail last week, let’s instead consider Scott’s specific claim on its merits.
Did Democrats really just cut Medicare by $280 billion?
In a twisted way, this style of deception is almost impressive. Normal people, engaged in public discourse in a healthy society, generally don’t even try to distort reality this brazenly.
As we discussed several weeks ago, the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act included provisions that empower the Medicare program to negotiate lower prices for consumers on prescription medications. Seniors will pay less, and taxpayers will save money.
Scott didn’t just vote against this popular proposal — which will be especially important in states like Florida — he now expects voters to see this as a Medicare “cut” for which Democrats should be punished. In the English language, there is no credible definition of “cut” under which this falls, and Scott has repeatedly been reminded of the truth and urged not to deceive the public. He keeps doing it anyway. (Bash, it’s worth emphasizing, told viewers the truth after the senator tried to mislead viewers.) For Democrats, this might very well be an opportunity. Indeed, Scott’s deceptive rhetoric could very easily be seen as a challenge: In the final week of the midterm election cycle, the parties have an opportunity to debate which party truly supports Medicare. Is that a fight the NRSC chair thinks he can win?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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