Conservative Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says he agrees with National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden that President Barack Obama’s proposed change to the way Social Security cost of living increases are calculated is an attack on seniors.
Walden, who represents Oregon in Congress and heads up the committee tasked with maintaining and expanding the GOP’s majority in the House, declared earlier in April that Obama’s Social Security reform proposal in his budget was a “shocking attack on seniors.”
The president’s chained-CPI proposal would slow the rate of growth of Social Security increases.
Republicans have been urging the president to propose entitlement reform. Walden’s assault on the president’s small step in that direction has prompted some Republican leaders to criticize Walden publicly.
“I’ve made it clear that I disagree with what Chairman Walden said. He and I have had a conversation about it. This is the least we must do to begin to solve the problems of Social Security,” House Speaker John Boehner said.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who previously served as a Republican congressman, urged GOP leaders to “condemn” Walden.
But far from condemn Walden, Gohmert told The Daily Caller Wednesday that he “agreed with him.”
“I mean, one of the things that I think most Republicans had agreed with was that we did not want to do anything to hurt people over 55,” Gohmert said.
“We need to reform Social Security, but it needs to be done in such a way that we don’t hurt people 55 and older who counted on it and had lived with that assurance it would be there. And for those under 55, we got to make some big changes and that way we can make sure young people have a Social Security when they get there. But we weren’t supposed to hurt anybody that’s over 55. So I thought Greg was exactly right.”
Gohmert says he sees no hypocrisy in the attack on the president’s entitlement reform proposal.
“Well, naturally, the president put forward entitlement reform that broke promises that Republicans had made so I would have thought that would be an area that we could actually agree on,” he said.
Last Wednesday, TheDC spent a whole day shadowing Gohmert, from his early morning baseball practice to an evening television interview. Check back to TheDC this week for an account of a day in the life of the conservative Texas congressman.