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   XPost: alt.politics.democrats.d, talk.politics.guns   
   From: ewilson@gmx.com   
      
   President Joe Biden and the White House have attacked Republicans in   
   recent months for positions the president himself once held on Social   
   Security and entitlement programs including sunset bills and raising the   
   retirement age, a CNN KFile review of Biden’s record shows.   
      
   In his State of the Union address earlier this year, and in the months   
   since, Biden has hammered Republicans over entitlements, saying they want   
   to cut Social Security and Medicare. The president zeroed in on Florida   
   Sen. Rick Scott’s sunset plan – though Biden himself introduced a similar   
   proposal in 1975 – which would have sunset all legislation without   
   exemptions for the two entitlement programs. Once Biden started attacking   
   Scott for the lack of exemptions for the entitlement programs, Scott added   
   that his sunset provisions would not apply to Social Security or Medicare.   
      
   Biden first introduced a proposal in 1975 that would have ceased funding   
   all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – unless   
   they were reauthorized by Congress. In fact, Biden’s bill was the first   
   so-called federal sunset bill, something the president later boasted about   
   in his 1978 Senate reelection campaign.   
      
   Biden has also attacked Republicans, saying congressional Republicans want   
   to cut the two entitlement programs and raise the retirement age to 70.   
   The White House vowed to not support any increase in the retirement age in   
   any future negotiations with Republicans even though Biden himself once   
   proposed raising the retirement age as life expectancy went up.   
      
   Biden, in one exchange pushing back against plans by then-President George   
   W. Bush to partially privatize Social Security in 2005, said he was open   
   to discussing benefit cuts to guarantee the solvency of the program.   
      
   “Raising the cap, raising the retirement age for people who are now 30   
   years old, raising the tax on Social Security, cutting benefits,” Biden   
   said. “They’re all things that have to be discussed, quite frankly.”   
      
   In other clips from the 1980’s uncovered by CNN’s KFile, Biden proposed   
   raising the retirement age up to possibly 70, saying that life expectancy   
   in the United States supported retiring later. Biden also said he was open   
   to raising the retirement age in the mid and late 2000s.   
      
   The White House pointed to past Biden votes in the 1980s, which extended   
   to the solvency of Social Security to say the president had always been a   
   “champion” for the program, along with his endorsement from the National   
   Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. But the White House   
   has not proposed any long-term fixes to guarantee the solvency of the   
   programs.   
      
   “President Biden has publicly pledged to veto any plan that cuts Social   
   Security or Medicare benefits or raises taxes on Americans making less   
   than $400,000 per year,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told CNN   
   in an email.   
      
   “President Biden earned the first-ever presidential endorsement from the   
   National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare because   
   Americans appreciate his decades-long support for protecting the Social   
   Security and Medicare benefits seniors have spent their working lives   
   earning,” Patterson continued.   
      
   On ‘sunset legislation’   
   Biden once boasted that he was the first person to introduce a bill to   
   require all federal programs be reauthorized or cease to be funded –   
   including Medicare and Social Security.   
      
   Now, Biden is attacking some Republicans over proposals to do the same,   
   citing a plan from Scott which – until recent changes – would have also   
   sunset all federal legislation.   
      
   “I introduced the Senate’s first ever free-standing sunset bill in 1975,”   
   Biden wrote in an article in 1984 for the Syracuse Law Review, referencing   
   a 1975 bill he introduced that did not include exemptions for Social   
   Security and Medicare. That bill passed the Senate by a vote of 87-1, but   
   later failed in the House.   
      
   Though Scott has since updated his bill to say it does not apply to the   
   two programs, Biden has continued to beat the drum on what he alleges are   
   Republicans’ plans – seeing it as a winning issue against the GOP in both   
   short term budget battles and a possible 2024 reelection.   
      
   “For example, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the guy has been saying for a   
   year – for a long time that he wants to sunset Social Security and   
   Medicare every five years,” Biden said in Virginia Beach in late February.   
   “What that means is: Every five years it comes up, if you don’t vote for   
   it back in existence again with the same – exactly like it was, it goes   
   away. Or you can reduce it. You can do whatever you want. But every five   
   years, it has to be voted on. Now he says, ‘Never mind’. Don’t need to do   
   that.”   
      
   Biden’s proposal would have actually sunset legislation quicker than   
   Scott’s – four years instead of five – but subsequent compromises he   
   supported changed the period to a decade.   
      
   In his first reelection campaign in 1978, Biden, then a noted critic in   
   the press of his opposition to excessive federal spending, boasted about   
   his efforts at debates and in television ads to enact sunset legislation.   
      
   “I wanted four years, but I’ll take 10 years, because right now we don’t   
   have any ‘sunset,” Biden said at one debate, citing a compromise bill from   
   that year which exempted federal entitlements like Social Security and   
   Medicare and extended the sunset period to ten years for other   
   legislation.   
      
   In the mid-1970s, inflation was historically high, and Biden suggested   
   cutting federal spending as one way to fight it – including, according to   
   The News Journal, a local paper, “restructuring” Social Security.   
      
   “If the reason we have inflation is because of deficit spending, and the   
   reason for that is because we’re spending more than we’re taking in, how   
   can we not cut programs and still balance the budget?”   
      
   A report from the Congressional Research Service, a division of the   
   Library of Congress which conducts research for the United States   
   Congress, credits Biden with introducing the first ever federal sunset   
   bill. In 1999, the Republican-led House Budget Committee also credited   
   Biden with bringing the first ever sunset bill to the federal level.   
      
   In 1975, Biden noted his bill applied to all federal spending, both large   
   and small.   
      
   “This bill applies to all authorizations for spending,” Biden said   
   introducing his bill. “It is not just the size of our budget that is   
   staggering, but even more the rate at which it is increasing. We cannot   
   long continue such growth rates in expenditures.”   
      
   In his 1984 article, Biden also said, “the effect of sunset legislation is   
   to set, for each agency of the federal government, a date certain at which   
   its programs will be terminated unless they are affirmatively revived by   
   Congress.”   
      
   “The purpose is to force the agencies, at regular intervals, to justify   
      
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