McCaskill Votes to Protect Medicare, Social Security, Pell Grants

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today voted to protect Missouri’s working families from dramatic cuts to vital services like Medicare, Social Security, and Pell Grants.

McCaskill opposed separate budget proposals debated in the Senate—measures intended to dismantle Medicare and turn it into a voucher program, slash Social Security benefits, and gut the Pell Grant program. The proposals were meant to replace the current federal budget in place under the Budget Control Act of last year, which followed last year’s compromise over the debt ceiling.

The proposals—which McCaskill called “each more extreme than the last”—would have implemented dramatic cuts in services for working families, while preserving tax giveaways for big oil companies as well as multi-millionaires and billionaires.

“It’s astonishing to me that so many Washington politicians want to cut vital services for our working families in order to provide new tax-goodies for millionaires, billionaires, and powerful corporations,” McCaskill said. “These people need to drop their obsession with dismantling Medicare, Social Security, and Pell Grants, and instead turn their focus to putting more folks back to work with new job opportunities, and balancing the budget in a responsible way.”

Proposals considered in the Senate today—which kept in place huge tax giveaways for big oil companies, multi-millionaires, and billionaires—included dramatic cuts to vital services, such as:

·         Dismantling Medicare and replacing it instead with a voucher program

·         Slashing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age to 70

·         Gutting Pell Grants by more than $6 billion

·         Dramatically cutting resources for road and bridge projects

McCaskill voted against the proposals.

McCaskill—a longtime advocate of capping federal spending and an opponent of Congressional earmarks—supported and helped pass the federal budget currently in place as part of the Budget Control Act. That legislation set the budget for two years, cutting the federal budget deficit by more than $2 trillion over that time.