'How long have you been in Congress?' Fox host puzzled by Republican's evasive comments

30 May

Maria Bartiromo

Mediaite reports some Republicans are having difficulty presenting which sections of the U.S. budget should go on the chopping block to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts without blowing up the nation’s debt.

The budget bill sitting in the Senate does not currently have enough support to pass with Republicans’ narrow majority, which could get sent back to the House for revisions.

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo cornered Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) about his personal drive to slash federal programs while his fellow Republicans were comparatively unwilling to commit to the step cuts necessary to avoid adding to the debt.

“So, Senator, I find it rich that you are talking like this when in fact just recently we saw the House come up with $1.5 trillion in cuts and the Senate came up with 4 billion in cuts,” she said. “Why was the Senate so low on (identifying) cuts?”

Scott insisted GOP senators are “committed” to “find more cuts than that.”

“I think it will take a lot of work,” Scott added. “I think we can clearly get his big beautiful bill done. I think we can clearly have fiscal sanity.”

“So, can you identify specifics for us?” Bartiromo eventually asked.

“Say again?” said Scott.

“Can you identify some specifics for us?” she asked. “Have you done it? Have you gone through every line in the budget, and can you—today—give us some specifics in terms of what needs to be cut to get you on board?”

“Maria, you cannot see a cut—Maria, you cannot see a copy of the budget,” said Scott. “We do spending bills. We don’t have budget bills. If you ask to see every line—”

“How long have you been in the Senate?” Bartiromo demanded. “How long have you been in Congress? You know the budget, roughly speaking, right?”

“I can tell you what I would—where I would start,” Scott said.

“Thank you,” Bartiromo inserted.

However, the only cuts Scott committed to in the interview involved rolling back former president Joe Biden’s Green New Deal and unspecific cuts to Medicaid.

“You’ve got to get every line of the budgets,” Scott said. “You’ve got to get rid of the Green New Deal. We’ve had 53% increase in spending in the last five years. So why don’t we go back and say, we’re going to start—we’re going to start with pre-pandemic spending and then see if we need to spend more. That’s what you would do with your personal life. But then I would go through Medicaid, but you’ve got to do every line. You’re not gonna do enough if you just focus on the Green New Deal and just focus on making sure Medicaid goes back to the original purpose.”

The latest KFF Health Tracking Poll found fewer than one in five adults (17 percent) want lawmakers to decrease Medicaid funding, and most think funding should either increase (42 percent) or be kept about the same (40 percent).

However, Scott said senators “shouldn’t be spending more money for able bodied adults for healthcare than we are for poor kids,” possibly referring to new proposed Medicaid application restrictions such as work and income requirements, which critics say serve as a de facto Medicaid cut by removing qualifying individuals from the program.

Read the full Mediate report here.

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