Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) is one Democrat who is calling for serious consideration of changes to Social Security — and she says she’s willing to lose her job over it.
During a discussion on MSNBC on Monday, the day President Obama’s budget proposal was presented, Sanchez credited the recent debt commission as having come forward with proposals on how to deal the problems posed by entitlement programs. However, as host Richard Lui pointed out, Obama hasn’t used the deficit commission’s proposals in the budget.
“Well it’s not for the president to put that in a yearly document,” Sanchez replied. “It’s for him to say to the Congress, please get to the table and fix Social Security. Please get to the table, we’ve got a problem with Medicare. And I am one of those people who actually take that commission’s report and am poring through it and saying listen, this is the beginning of the real dialogue that we need.
“The Republicans don’t want to do that, and a lot of my fellow Democrats don’t want to do that here. But we need to do it. And it doesn’t make you popular. I may lose my job over the fact that I say, we need to make some changes to Social Security and Medicare. We need to make some changes to retirements, et cetera. We need to make some defense cuts, where there’s waste, fraud and abuse.
Lui asked: “Are you willing to lose your job over this?”
“Yes,” Sanchez responded, “because first and foremost i’m an American. And I care about the healthy — the fiscal, the stability of our nation.”
