Sen. Ron Johnson Suggests Annual Review of Medicare, Social Security Spending for Better Oversight

Katabella RobertsAugust 4, 2022

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Wednesday suggested that Social Security and Medicare should no longer be classified as federal entitlement programs and instead the funds should be approved by Congress on a yearly basis in an effort to curb debt.

The lawmaker made the comments during an Aug. 3 interview on “The Regular Joe Show,” a conservative radio program on WTAQ News Talk in Wisconsin.

Johnson noted that budgets for the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs are approved as discretionary spending annually.

“Social Security and Medicare, if you qualify for the entitlement, you just get it no matter what the cost,” he said. “And our problem in this country is that more than 70 percent of our federal budget, of our federal spending, is all mandatory spending. … You don’t get in there and fix the programs going bankrupt. It’s just on automatic pilot.”

Social Security benefits are available upon retirement in the United States to citizens age 65 or older or those who are disabled, while Medicare health insurance is available to people 65 or older, or to some younger people with disabilities. The programs are funded by payroll taxes.

Johnson said the two programs should have their budgets appropriated by Congress each year so that everything can be evaluated.

‘Massive Debt Burden’

“What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so it’s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt,” Johnson said. “As long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt. … It’s this massive debt burden.”

Medicare currently covers almost 64 million Americans and is projected to cost $1.02 trillion in 2023, according to the Republican Study Committee, while over 55 million retirees, survivors, and their families collect benefits from the Social Security