House Republicans burst out laughing at Biden’s statement on welfare work requirements

June 1st is just two weeks away and with it comes the deadline to find a solution to the debt ceiling crisis before the U.S. defaults. As President Joe Biden prepared to leave for Japan to attend the G7 Hiroshima Summit, he stated he’d accept “not anything of consequence” when it comes to adding work requirements to some costly welfare programs.

It’s a hotly debated point of contention in the negotiations, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) calling it a “non-starter.”

When asked to comment on Biden’s stance, House Republicans, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, spontaneously erupted in laughter, with one member of the GOP exclaiming, “Loser!”

During a pre-flight “message of reassurance” for House Republicans regarding the debt ceiling, Biden stated on Wednesday, “I’m not going to accept any work requirements that’s going to impact on medical health needs of people. I’m not going to accept any work requirements that go much beyond what is already – well, I voted years ago for the work requirements that exist, but it’s possible there could be a few others, but not anything of any consequence.”

(Video: Fox News)

“House GOP lawmakers included new work requirements for able-bodied adults to qualify for Medicaid in the Limit, Save, Grow Act. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated these requirements would save $109 billion in the next decade,” Fox News Digital reports. “Still, Democrats oppose the measure because they say it will make it harder for poor people to access benefits.”

When the laughter subsided, McCarthy noted that, as a senator, Biden voted for the very thing he is now rejecting.

“I don’t under — anything that has consequences,” he replied incredulously. “This is a senator who voted for work requirements. Listen, I think when you’re sitting in the room and you’re listening to the American public, why wouldn’t he want to help people get out of poverty?”


(Video: YouTube)

“But listen to what he is really saying,” McCarthy continued. “So, the decision he is making in his mind is, if he doesn’t want to have something that has consequences, he wants to borrow more money from China to pay an able-bodied person who has no dependents not even to look for a job, not even to go to school for 20 hours.”

“So, you’re going to ask little Sam to make that ninety-four thousand dollars higher because we’re going to borrow from China for a person who could go get a job to not help him get one,” he stated. “So what you’re going to have is a supply chain that doesn’t work, as well as more dependency on China and making America in a weaker position. I think that’s wrong, so I wish he was here. Then we could debate it even more.”

Because the internet is forever, on Twitter, House Republicans posted a 1996 clip of Joe Biden as a senator, boasting about the “concept of workfare” he introduced in 1986.

“I remember being pilloried by my colleagues on the Democratic side at the time,” Senator Biden said, “for suggesting that there be mandatory work requirement for anyone receiving welfare.”

 

Melissa Fine

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