Biden homes in on Rick Scott as he challenges Republicans on Social Security

By Priscilla Alvarez, Steve Contorno, Phil Mattingly and Betsy Klein, CNN

President Joe Biden on Thursday made a forceful argument against Republicans by highlighting his support for Social Security and Medicare, an appeal to the senior-rich Sunshine State as he makes moves toward a 2024 reelection announcement.

Biden took his State of the Union argument to the home state of GOP Sen. Rick Scott, seizing a political opportunity to go after Scott’s proposal to sunset federal legislation — including Social Security and Medicare — every five years, and poking at Floridian and former President Donald Trump, who has announced his 2024 candidacy.

The president sought to draw a sharp contrast with Scott, with White House aides placing a copy of Scott’s proposal on every seat for Biden’s Tampa event.

The president referenced Florida’s senior demographics as he made a broad pitch for his efforts to lower health care costs, noting the state has the “highest percentage of seniors of any state in the nation,” a group he lost by 10 points to Trump in 2020 and an area he could seek to rebuild support in 2024.

Referencing his “spirited debate” with Republicans at the State of the Union, Biden called Scott’s proposal “outrageous” and vowed to veto it.

“The very idea the senator from Florida wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years I find to be somewhat outrageous. So outrageous that you might not even believe it,” he said, pulling out a pamphlet detailing Scott’s plan.

He continued, “In case there’s any doubt, just yesterday, he confirmed that he still likes his proposal. Well I guarantee you: it will not happen. I will veto it. I will defend Social Security and Medicare.”

The speech was Biden’s latest opportunity to highlight the proposal and drive home his message that the GOP aims to end entitlement programs. White House advisers don’t view the Sunshine State as a key piece of the electoral map in a 2024 run, aware that the state has moved sharply away from Democrats but as a place where it can highlight the issues that dramatically pop in their polling, like Medicare and Social Security.

But there’s no state with a larger population that utilizes those programs and most critically. And there are no two politicians they want to spar with more on the programs than Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We want this fight,” a senior White House official told CNN ahead of the event. “We relish this fight.”

In anticipation of Biden’s visit, Scott ran an ad criticizing Biden and claiming the president is to blame for cuts to Medicare, concluding: “Biden should resign.”

The senator repeated his criticism of Biden’s visit on “CNN This Morning” Thursday, disputing Biden’s characterization of his proposal and calling the president a “failure.”

“Look at what the people in my state care about. Inflation — he caused it. Gas prices — he caused it. We got open border — he caused it. … Look at the Chinese spy balloon. He let the thing go clear across this country before he did anything. And there is no transparency in his administration.”

Referring to Scott’s ad, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said it “only cements that congressional Republicans are targeting Medicare. Repealing the AARP-backed Inflation Reduction Act, as Scott’s now calling for, would impose the biggest cut to Medicare benefits in decades.”

“Every time Rick Scott opens his mouth, he proves the president’s point. The man who got rich overseeing the biggest Medicare fraud in history is protesting too much — again,” Bates added.

Biden focuses on contrasting with GOP

The president’s decision to highlight Scott’s proposal drew the fiercest reaction from Republicans during Tuesday’s address to Congress, eliciting loud jeers by accusing some Republicans of supporting changes to the popular entitlement programs. The Republican Study Committee also previously put out a budget plan that calls for making several changes to Social Security and Medicare that would amount to cutting the programs’ benefits for future senior citizens.

Neither that proposal nor Scott’s plans made it far — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly dismissed it, saying that the GOP would not include in its agenda a bill that sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. And newly anointed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged not to touch the programs even as he seeks budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling this summer.

But that hasn’t stopped Biden’s politicking, and it could allow him an opening to improve on his showing among seniors in the 2020 election — particularly in Florida, a state where he lost voters 65 and older to Trump by 10 points in 2020, wider than his 5-point deficit nationally.

During his remarks Thursday, Biden added a twist to a previous promise: “I know that a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me say this: if that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.”

Biden specifically highlighted provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year aimed at letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices. He also went after Republicans for “trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act for years” and efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, offering a reelection argument as he vowed to veto any such moves.

“Make no mistake about it: They tried to raise the cost of prescription drugs or abolish the Affordable Care Act, I will veto it,” Biden said.

In an indirect reference to Trump, Biden pointed to bipartisan legislation including the infrastructure bill, CHIPS and Science Act, PACT Act aimed at supporting veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, and legislation codifying same-sex marriage.

“We did that in a bipartisan way — Democrats and Republicans did it. I don’t know why they don’t acknowledge that, it’s part of what’s making the country great again,” Biden said, alluding to Trump’s MAGA slogan.

He later took aim at Trump on the national debt: “The last fellow who had this job, who never showed up at the transition, I might add, but the last guy to have this job, he increased the federal debt, which took over 200 years to accumulate. … Just in four years, he added to that federal debt of over 200 years, by 25%.”

The visit to Wisconsin and the message in Florida show that the president’s State of the Union back-and-forth may have been unscripted, but the lines were very intentional in trying to draw a response, according to several officials.

“They walked right into the trap,” the close adviser told CNN. “Chaos and extremes.”

Asked if that’s how they viewed Scott and DeSantis, the adviser chuckled: “The most chaos. The most extreme.”

Potential 2024 challenger in DeSantis

Scott is not Biden’s only rival in the state. DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential contender, has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration, especially over immigration policy.

The relationship between the two men perhaps hit its lowest point in September of last year, when DeSantis orchestrated two flights carrying migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Biden accused DeSantis of “playing politics with human beings,” while DeSantis contended the stunt had worked in getting the White House’s attention on the border crisis.

As Biden touches down in Tampa, Florida, lawmakers meeting in the state Capitol are considering an expansion of the migrant transport program that would give DeSantis more power to move recent asylum seekers from border states to Democratic-leaning jurisdictions.

The move, expected to pass this week in a special session, is intended to lift legal hurdles that have stalled the program in the months after the initial planes took off, potentially setting off another showdown between DeSantis and Biden over immigration.

DeSantis’ monumental victory in his November reelection — a 19-point shellacking of Democrat Charlie Crist, who Biden campaigned for in the final days of the race — further energized conservatives who want to see the Republican Party nominate Florida’s governor to take on the incumbent Democratic president in 2024.

His victory also left Democrats in Florida utterly devastated and fearing the national party will decide to leave the Sunshine State off the electoral map in two years and instead focus resources on protecting Biden’s wins in other key Midwest and Southwest battlegrounds.

“I am hopeful that by coming to Tampa he is telling the country that Democrats are not writing off Florida and that the performance of his administration over the last two years can ensure the benefits in Florida,” said former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a Democrat. “But yes, we have some structural issues we have to deal with.”

Those structural issues include a massive shift in voter registration patterns. When Biden was on the ticket for the first time in Florida as Barack Obama’s running mate, Democrats saw a historic wave of new voters and the party outnumbered registered Republicans by nearly 700,000. By the time he ran for president in 2020, the Democratic advantage was under 100,000 voters.

Now, Republicans outnumber Democrats here by nearly 400,000.

Meanwhile, the Florida Democratic Party is leaderless after the abrupt resignation of former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz as party chair, and it has struggled to raise money in a state that is notoriously expensive and complicated to campaign because of its vast, multilingual media markets.

It won’t help the case of Florida Democrats that Biden lost the Sunshine State to Trump in 2020 despite a $100 million injection by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But forgoing the state’s 30 electoral college votes is a tough way for Democrats to start in 2024.

“It can be a game changer in a presidential cycle,” Buckhorn said. “Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it’s complicated and we have ground to make up. But it’s ground that we used to own.”

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CNN’s Shawna Mizelle contributed to this report.