Misleading Democratic Ad in Nevada on ‘Sunsetting Medicare and Social Security’ – FactCheck.org

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Sam Brown, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, has publicly supported cutting federal spending in ways that experts say would require deep cuts in popular programs. But his Democratic opponent goes too far in a TV ad that claims Brown “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security.” 

Brown did not say he would end Medicare and Social Security. To the contrary, his campaign told us that Brown is “against cuts to either program.”

The ad, which was released earlier this month by Sen. Jacky Rosen’s campaign, refers to comments that Brown made in February 2022 about Sen. Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America.” Scott designed the plan as a roadmap for governing if the Republicans took control of Congress after the 2022 midterm elections. At the time, Brown was running in Nevada’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate – a race that he lost to former state Attorney General Paul Laxalt. 

“Point Six” of Scott’s plan, which was labeled “government reform/debt,” said, in part: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Social Security (1935) and Medicare (1965) were created by legislation, so Scott’s plan was criticized at the time by Democrats and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for threatening to end both programs. 

In response, Scott said in a March 2022 interview that “no one,” including himself, “wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security,” claiming that he just wanted to start a debate in Congress on how to “preserve those programs.” In February 2023, when he reintroduced his plan, he added a note saying it “was never intended to apply to Social Security, Medicare, or the US Navy.”

Despite the plan’s revised language on the senior programs and Brown’s insistence that he would not cut either program, the Rosen campaign is using Scott’s plan to attack Brown in a TV ad.

The narrator in the ad says, “Sam Brown embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security. Sam Brown publicly supported forcing massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and was caught on tape saying he admires the plan to phase out Social Security and Medicare entirely in five years.”

The single source cited in the ad is the American Journal News, a website operated by True Blue Media LLC and funded by Democratic donors. The site’s “about” page says, “True Blue Media is a for-profit media company that relies on ad revenue and investors, including The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation,” which is a nonprofit affiliated with the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, or AB PAC. 

The Aug. 2, 2023, article on the partisan website is based on comments Brown made in February 2022 during a monthly meeting of Las Vegas’ Spring Mountain Republican Women. However, Brown made no mention in his remarks of sunsetting Medicare or Social Security or forcing massive cuts to the programs. 

When asked which senator he “admires the most,” Brown said he admires Scott for “trying to cast a positive vision” and “attempting to create a roadmap for a better America,” referring to Scott’s Plan to Rescue America. 

“I think I appreciate that he’s trying to look forward. He’s trying to cast a positive vision,” Brown said of Scott. “One of the things I think that some of our Republican Party leaders have failed at is that we have become labeled, and sometimes we do this to ourselves, as the party of no. ‘Oh, no, we’re not going to do that.’ You know? We’re the party of just rejecting policy instead of the party of projecting ideas, and what Rick Scott has done in attempting to create a roadmap for a better America is something that I admire as well.”

Brown did not address any specifics of Scott’s plan in his remarks, and his campaign told us that Brown doesn’t support any cuts to Social Security or Medicare. 

“This issue is very personal to him, as he has been the beneficiary of Social Security and Medicare,” Brown campaign spokesperson Richard Hernandez told us in an email. “He is against cuts to either program.” 

Brown is a retired Army captain who was seriously injured and badly burned by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Some military veterans are eligible to receive benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, and the Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, programs. Those who receive SSDI for 24 months are automatically eligible to receive Medicare.  

“Protecting Social Security and Medicare is important to me,” Brown said in a recent YouTube video that his campaign sent to us. “After I was medically retired from the military, Social Security and Medicare were there for me when I needed it most.”

Brown also said, like former President Donald Trump, he supports exempting Social Security benefits from federal income tax. Such a plan would have the net effect of increasing benefits for some seniors, but it also would increase the federal deficit unless the revenue loss is offset. Taxing Social Security benefits raised $51 billion in revenue in 2024, according to the Social Security Administration.

Other Evidence From Rosen Campaign

We asked the Rosen campaign for other evidence that Brown, as the TV ad said, “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security.” We received a statement that cited not only Scott’s plan but other fiscal policies that Brown has supported.

“The ad clearly states that Sam Brown supports forcing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which is a well-documented consequence of several economic plans he supports, including Sen. Rick Scott’s plan that would phase out Social Security and Medicare in 5 years, which Brown likened to ‘a roadmap for a better America,’ a GOP balanced budget amendment, and his own call to cut federal spending ‘across the board,’” the statement read. “Analysis has consistently found these programs would either force or threaten massive cuts to federal spending, including Social Security and Medicare. And in each case, Brown did not state he believed the programs should be exempt from cuts.”

As we mentioned earlier, Brown’s campaign has said that he would not end or cut Social Security and Medicare.

However, the Rosen campaign has a point that Brown has supported cutting federal spending in ways that experts warn would put popular programs at risk. The campaign’s evidence included a Nevada Current article last month about Brown saying he could support legislation that would cut the federal budget by 1% in successive years in an attempt to balance the budget.

Sen. Rand Paul has been proposing what he has called the “Penny Plans” for years, but the proposals have gotten progressively more aggressive. For example, Paul’s “Penny Plan Budget” for fiscal year 2019 would have required cuts of 1% every year for five years in discretionary spending, which excludes spending on mandatory programs such as Medicare and Social Security. More recently, Paul proposed a “Six Penny Plan” for fiscal year 2023 that would have cut federal spending by 6%, except for Social Security, annually for five years.

“Rand Paul’s done a lot of studying on this in the past. He used to say if we reduce spending by 1% a year for several years, we can get back to a much healthier spot,” the Nevada Current article quoted Brown as saying at a Republican women’s luncheon in February. “I haven’t heard an update on all that with all the spending we’ve had in the last 24 months, but I think that’s a very reasonable place to start. Just saying, ‘Hey, let’s have all the agencies and departments start to tighten their belts across the board.’”

While he did say it is “very reasonable” to cut federal spending annually by 1%, Brown did not say which programs he would cut and did not mention Social Security and Medicare at all. The lack of specificity is an inherent problem with Paul’s legislation and his attempts to pass such a plan in Congress, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

In 2018, when Paul introduced his “Penny Plan Budget,” the CRFB wrote: “Penny plans tell lawmakers how much spending to cut, but they do not provide any guidance as to what programs should be cut.” And, CRFB added, “without those specifics, it’s very difficult to see how dramatic spending cuts of this nature are politically or mathematically possible to achieve.”

In its article, the Nevada Current also quoted Brown as saying, “A balanced budget amendment is also something I would support.” Such amendments could trigger deep spending cuts, including to Medicare. In 2013, economist Henry J. Aaron of the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center warned the House Judiciary Committee that a Republican BBA proposal at that time “would negatively impact the economy and threaten the nation’s financial stability.”

“The cuts would have had to apply to national defense, veterans benefits, nutrition assistance, Medicare—everything other than Social Security and interest payments,” Aaron testified. “These cuts or equivalent tax increases, it is estimated, would have put 15 million more people out of work, doubled unemployment from 9 percent to 18 percent, and cut GDP by 17 percent.”

Paul himself has said that Medicare would be subject to cuts in his most recent “penny plan.” In an interview with Fox News in June 2023, the Kentucky Republican said “the penny plan used to work. It was a 1% cut across the entire board. Now, it’s a 5%, but it’s across everything,” including Medicare.

“Look, the Medicare budget is a trillion dollars,” he said. “You think you can’t skim off a few percentage without actually reducing healthcare? I think you could actually do it and enhance healthcare by making Medicare more efficient, but no one ever does it. They just say it’s off the table.”

We asked the Brown campaign how its candidate intends to balance the budget without cutting Social Security and Medicare – two programs that are the main drivers of federal deficit spending, as the Congressional Budget Office said in a June report. But the campaign provided no substantive answer. Instead, it referred us back to the video of Brown discussing the need for “better economic policies” without offering any specifics.

“Bad monetary and fiscal policies are at the root of most of our problems — if we fix this and have growth, we’ll be in a much better place economically and these programs will remain solvent,” Hernandez, Brown’s spokesperson, told us. “Sam won’t allow cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”

It’s fair game for the Rosen campaign to criticize Brown for supporting fiscal policies that could potentially put popular programs at risk, including Medicare. But it’s inaccurate to say that Brown “embraced sunsetting Medicare and Social Security” or suggest that he supports “the plan to phase out Social Security and Medicare entirely in five years.” At this point, not even Scott — the author of the Plan to Rescue America — supports subjecting Medicare and Social Security to the sunset requirement.

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