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Sen. Rick Scott doubles down on plan to ‘fix’ Social Security, Medicare and 'live within our means'

Florida Sen. Rick Scott argues it's better to balance the congressional budget than "spending to oblivion" while struggling to solve a "dramatic" debt ceiling debacle.

As the U.S. economy heads towards economic disaster, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., doubled down on his plan to "fix" Social Security and Medicare after attacks from President Biden and Democrats. 

"I have no interest in cutting the benefits of Social Security or Medicare, and we can fix this without doing that. We can live within our means," Scott told host Maria Bartiromo on "Mornings with Maria" Tuesday. "But they don't want to. Anybody wants to keep raising the debt ceiling, spending to oblivion. They're hurting the people they say they care about."

The CBO projects that U.S. debt is on track to reach a record 118% of GDP by 2033 and Social Security will go insolvent by 2035. 

Republicans such as Scott want Congress to "balance our budget" before raising the statutory debt ceiling. The U.S. Treasury Department has indicated it began using "extraordinary measures" to avoid defaulting on the national debt before the deadline hits this summer.

Scott has proposed a 12-point "Rescue America" plan which would sunset all federal legislation in five years with exceptions for Social Security and Medicare.

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The Florida senator released his plan last year as a proposed Republican legislative agenda ahead of the midterm elections. Democrats seized on several of Scott's proposals, including a blanket statement that "all federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again."

Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., among others, accused the GOP of intending to cut Social Security and Medicare based on Scott's proposal, which he vehemently denied.

"What we've got to do is balance our budget. Start right now. Go through every line in the budget," Scott said Tuesday. "Let me give an example. We pay for 77,000 federal buildings that are empty every year. Why are we doing that? Would you do that with your money? We have almost a half a trillion dollars of programs – that were never authorized – that the executive branch is spending money on."

Even though the president is expected to present his budget next month, Biden still missed the traditional first Monday of February deadline, marking the third year in a row he failed to submit a spending plan to Congress on time.

"The problem we have is, in D.C., nobody wants to solve a problem," Scott said. "Let's live in reality: We have a spending problem. We have a dramatic spending problem we can fix. There's ways to reduce the cost of the delivery system in Medicare. We don't even have a conversation about that. There’s no conversation about this stuff."

"When I was governor of Florida, when I was in my business life, I went line by line through the budget. There's 4,000 lines in the budget in Florida. I went line by line and said, we are not going to fund this if it doesn't meet its purpose," the senator continued. "It might be nice to have, it might sound good, we're not going to do it."

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Scott's "Rescue America" proposals came into renewed focus this month after Biden cited him during the State of the Union address, vowing to veto any legislation that touches Social Security or Medicare.

The president's comments were met with loud boos from the Republican side of the aisle in the House chamber, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and others called the president a "liar."

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Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

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