Michael Shumway Lee professionally known as Mike Lee is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Utah, a seat he has held since 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party. The news related to his social security spread and in this post you will read about it.
President Biden and Senator Mike Lee Clash Over Social Security in Fiery Exchange
During his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden refrained from naming specific Republicans in Congress who he claimed wanted to eliminate Social Security. But he did so on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, during an address in Wisconsin, where he was joined by Senator Mike Lee of Utah.
When the president stated that Republicans planned to slash Medicare and Social Security, he was met with an irate chorus of shouts and jeers from the sidelines as well as a shake of the head from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Biden speaking, “There was a senator named Mike Lee who was yelling, you know, liar, liar, house on fire kind of stuff last night” at a training facility run by the Laborers’ International Union of North America. Biden then went on to quote Lee at a 2010 campaign event captured on video. Lee said at a meeting with voters in Cache Valley:
“It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it … Medicaid and Medicare are of the same sort. They need to be pulled up.”
Biden stated quoting Lee’s words:
“Sounds pretty clear to me. How about you? But they sure didn’t like me calling them on it.”
Lee said Biden also disregarded the fact that during his twelve years in the Senate, he never suggested doing away with Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare instead, he made suggestions on how to strengthen and stabilize these systems. Below we shared a tweet related to it:
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) February 8, 2023
Lee said from the campaign event:
“There’s going to be growing pains associated with doing this. We can’t do it all at once. We have to hold harmless those who are current beneficiaries. Those who are retired and are currently receiving those benefits, their benefits have to be untouched, unchanged, unphased. The next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”
Biden’s assertion that some Republicans in the House chamber desire to expire Social Security elicited a furious response from Republicans including Lee. In a video released later, he claimed that the “president of the United States looked us right in the eye and mischaracterized what half the people in the chamber believe” made this State of the Union unlike any other he had attended.
In the previous year’s race, Lee was also targeted by independent Senate candidate Evan McMullin over remarks he made in 2010. A few days prior to the election, McMullin released an advertisement featuring a video clip of Lee expressing his desire to abolish Social Security.
Don’t take it from me, take it from Mike Lee: He wants to walk back our promise to seniors and dismantle social security.
Utah, we can’t let him get away with it. Remember our seniors at the polls on November 8th—watch now: pic.twitter.com/TxV8tjaKBL
— Evan McMullin 🇺🇸 (@EvanMcMullin) November 3, 2022
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As the senator noted in his statement in response to Biden, the Lee campaign also drew attention to the fact that the advertisement omitted his assertion that current recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are innocent.
Lee was questioned with the 2010 statement at a meeting with the editorial boards of the Provo Daily Herald and Ogden’s Standard-Examiner last year, during the election season. “That’s sensitive stuff,” he remarked, adding that he couldn’t remember ever supporting the elimination of Social Security or other social programs.
He said:
“But I don’t remember ever, in any time since I first became a candidate for the Senate, ever saying, ‘No, we just have to end Social Security and uproot all the expectations of those who’ve paid into it.”
He said:
“Congress steals from it, raids it and otherwise ruins it. We should not trust the federal government with sweeping power over people’s livelihoods.”
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