Sen. Rick Scott’s rough week began with President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, when the Democrat briefly alluded to the Florida Republican’s agenda, and many GOP lawmakers — reluctant to be associated with Scott’s misguided ideas — immediately booed.
In the days that followed, the far-right senator reiterated support for his regressive plan for Social Security and Medicare, leading Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to declare, in reference to the Floridian’s blueprint, “It’s just a bad idea. I think it will be a challenge for [Scott] to deal with this in his own re-election in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any other state in America.”
Over the weekend, things got just a little worse for the senator, as Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said “the vast majority” of GOP senators prefer a “different direction” than Scott’s plan.
With this in mind, common sense might suggest that the Floridian would want to focus less attention on his plans for the popular social insurance programs. Instead, as The Hill reported, Scott thinks he can put things right with a new legislative proposal.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) announced a new bill on Friday to increase funding for Social Security and Medicare and institute a higher standard for making cuts to the entitlement programs, following President Biden’s pointed accusations during his annual address before Congress on Tuesday.
Yes, the controversial GOP lawmaker has a new plan called the Protect Our Seniors Act, that would make it more difficult for Congress to cut existing Medicare and Social Security benefits. But that’s not the provocative part of his bill.
Rather, the most notable detail was Scott’s stated intention to cut funding for law enforcement and redirect the funds.
“[T]he Protect Our Seniors Act will rescind funding for Joe Biden’s new 87,000 IRS agent army and redirect those funds to Medicare and Social Security to shore up these programs and address threats of insolvency,” the senator said in a press statement issued Friday.
And what’s wrong with that? At this point, we could note how strange it is to see a prominent Republican once again push to cut resources for law enforcement. We could also note that Medicare and Social Security are facing long-term fiscal challenges, and the money Scott is referencing here wouldn’t make much of a difference. We could even devote a paragraph or two to addressing the fact that the Floridian, even now, still hasn’t backed off his plan to sunset the social insurance programs — a point both parties have now deemed as unacceptable. But even if we put all of these relevant details aside, there’s an even more glaring problem: In reality, there is no “new 87,000 IRS agent army.” It doesn’t exist. This is a lie Republicans have embraced with a little too much enthusiasm, despite the fact that it’s demonstrably false. Scott, who deliberately deceives the public with talking points he knows to be false, is not a fool. He surely knows the claims about 87,000 IRS agents aren’t true. But the senator is stuck in a jam of his making, and he apparently thinks lying about imagined IRS agents will somehow make his problems go away. He’s mistaken.
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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