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      Biden Emphasizes the Threat to Social Security and Medicare at Rally

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      PHILADELPHIA — President Biden doubled down on Saturday on his warning that Republicans will try to roll back Social Security and Medicare benefits if they win control of Congress next week, making the election a referendum on America’s safety net programs.“These guys will never cease to amaze me, man,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign rally in Philadelphia. “They’re literally coming after Social Security and Medicare.”The president criticized two Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida, as major threats to the programs and pointed to a Republican proposal that would require approvals for funding every five years.Mr. Biden referred to Mr. Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, as “that guy that’s pushing Oz,” a reference to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate who is running against Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman.Mr. Biden also highlighted his work to expand health benefits for veterans, pointing to his late son Beau’s battle with brain cancer after returning from Iraq.Mr. Biden said that it is not just Social Security, the right to vote and abortion rights that are on the ballot. Lacing into the Republican candidates and his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, he said: “Character is on the ballot.” More

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      Biden Says Social Security Is on ‘Chopping Block’ if Republicans Win Congress

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      WASHINGTON — President Biden warned on Tuesday that Republicans posed a threat to Social Security and Medicare, amplifying an effort by Democrats to make the fate of America’s social safety net programs a central campaign issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.The comments were part of a push by Democrats across the country to steer the political conversation away from soaring prices and growing recession fears and remind anxious voters that some Republicans have been calling for restructuring or scaling back entitlement programs that retirees have relied on for decades.The strategy is a return to a familiar election-year theme. Although Mr. Biden, who spoke from the White House’s Rose Garden, offered few details about how he would preserve the benefits, he insisted that if Republicans regained control of Congress they would try to take them away.“What do you think they’re going to do?” Mr. Biden asked, brandishing a copy of a plan drafted by Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, that would allow Social Security and Medicare to “sunset” if Congress did not pass new legislation to extend them.A spokesman for Mr. Scott said the senator was fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare.The criticism has put Republicans on the defensive, with many arguing that their policies would ensure that Social Security and Medicare do not run out of money.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.Despite suggestions of their imminent demise, Social Security and Medicare are unlikely to be altered as long as Mr. Biden is in power. Top Republicans including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have said that Mr. Scott’s proposal is a nonstarter.But decades of political squabbling have left the programs in limbo.Tens of millions of aging Americans rely on Social Security and Medicare to supplement their income and health care expenses. The finances of Social Security and Medicare have been on unstable ground for years, and Congress has been unable to come together to find a solution to secure the solvency of the programs..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Government actuaries said in June that the health of the social safety net programs improved slightly last year, because of the strength of the economic recovery, but that shortfalls were still looming.Mr. Biden did not offer a specific proposal for the programs on Tuesday beyond keeping them out of the hands of Republicans. He also took aim at Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who is facing re-election and has suggested that all federal spending, including for Social Security and Medicare, should be reviewed annually by Congress.“He wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every single year in every budget,” Mr. Biden said. “If Congress doesn’t vote to keep it, goodbye.”Mr. Johnson said on Twitter on Tuesday that he wanted to save Social Security, Medicare and benefits for veterans, and that Democrats were telling “lies” about his proposals.“The greatest threat to these programs is the massive, out-of-control deficit spending enacted by Biden and Dems in congress,” Mr. Johnson said.The Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retiree benefits, will be depleted in 2034, at which time the fund’s reserves will run down and incoming tax revenue will be enough to cover only 77 percent of scheduled benefits. Medicare’s hospital trust fund, which does not affect benefits that cover doctor visits and prescription drugs, improved last year but is expected to encounter a shortfall in 2028.Concerns about the solvency of the programs come as retirees are grappling with the highest levels of inflation in four decades. Social Security payments are expected to increase by around 9 percent next month when a cost-of-living adjustment that is pegged to inflation is announced.Those increases are usually somewhat offset by an increase in Medicare premiums for doctors’ visits, but Mr. Biden said those premiums would not rise this year.Senators like Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, called earlier for expanding Social Security and extending its solvency by raising taxes on the rich. More

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      With Midterms Looming, McConnell’s Woes Pile Up

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      The minority leader who takes pride in his status as the “grim reaper” of his rivals’ agenda has allowed Democrats to claim policy victories as his party’s hopes of reclaiming the Senate dim.WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, spent the summer watching Democrats score a series of legislative victories of the sort he once swore he would thwart.His party’s crop of candidate recruits has struggled to gain traction, threatening his chances of reclaiming the Senate majority.And this week, his dispute with the leader of the Republicans’ Senate campaign arm escalated into a public war.As the Senate prepares to return to Washington next week for a final stint before the midterm congressional elections, Mr. McConnell is entering an autumn of discontent, a reality that looks far different from where he was expecting to be at the start of President Biden’s term.Back then, the top Senate Republican spoke of dedicating himself full time to “stopping this new administration” and predicted that Democrats would struggle to wield their razor-thin majorities, giving Republicans an upper hand to win back both the House and the Senate.Instead, the man known best for his ability to block and kill legislation — he once proclaimed himself the “grim reaper” — has felt the political ground shift under his feet. Democrats have, in the space of a few months, managed to pass a gun safety compromise, a major technology and manufacturing bill, a huge veterans health measure, and a climate, health and tax package — either by steering around Mr. McConnell or with his cooperation.At the same time, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade appears to have handed Democrats a potent issue going into the midterm elections, brightening their hopes of keeping control of the Senate.Mr. McConnell has acknowledged the challenges. He conceded recently that Republicans had a stronger chance of winning back the House than of taking power in the Senate in November, in part because of “candidate quality.”The comment was widely interpreted to reflect Mr. McConnell’s growing concern about Republicans’ roster of Senate recruits, heavily influenced by former President Donald J. Trump and his hard-right supporters, who have earned Mr. Trump’s endorsement but appear to be struggling in competitive races.It also hinted at a more basic problem that has made Mr. McConnell’s job all the more difficult: his increasingly bitter rift with Mr. Trump, which has put him at odds with the hard-right forces that hold growing sway in the Republican Party.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAn Upset in Alaska: Mary Peltola, a Democrat, beat Sarah Palin in a special House election, adding to a series of recent wins for the party. Ms. Peltola will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress.Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a New York special election is one of the latest examples.G.O.P.’s Dimming Hopes: Republicans are still favored in the fall House races, but former President Donald J. Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress party insiders.Digital Pivot: At least 10 G.O.P. candidates in competitive races have updated their websites to minimize their ties to Mr. Trump or to adjust their uncompromising stances on abortion.“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post last month that also took aim at Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, calling her “crazy.” Ms. Chao served as transportation secretary in the Trump administration until she abruptly resigned after the Jan. 6 attack.Anti-Trump conservatives argue that Mr. McConnell put himself in an untenable position by failing to fully repudiate Mr. Trump after the assault on the Capitol, when the Kentucky Republican could have engineered a conviction at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, removing him and barring him from holding office again.“It’s like the zombie movie where he comes back to haunt and horrify you,” said Bill Kristol, the conservative columnist. Mr. McConnell, he said, “thought he could have a good outcome legislatively and politically in 2022 without explicitly pushing back on Trump. That was the easier course. It may turn out to be a very self-defeating course for him.” More

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      Rick Scott Lashes Out at Mitch McConnell in Sign of Dimming Republican Hopes for Senate

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      The Senate’s Republican campaign chief on Thursday appeared to escalate an ugly quarrel with the party’s longtime leader in the chamber, Senator Mitch McConnell, in the latest sign of the G.O.P.’s eroding confidence about winning back the majority in November.Without naming Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, lashed out in a blistering opinion piece in The Washington Examiner at Republicans he said were “trash-talking” the party’s candidates, an apparent reference to comments last month in which Mr. McConnell said that “candidate quality” could harm the G.O.P.’s chances of retaking the Senate. Mr. Scott called such remarks “treasonous” and said those who make them should “pipe down.”“Unfortunately, many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates,” Mr. Scott wrote. “It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conservative cause.”Speaking to reporters in his home state last month, Mr. McConnell conceded that Republicans had a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate in November.“Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in Florence, Ky. The comment was widely interpreted to reflect Mr. McConnell’s growing concern about Republicans’ roster of Senate recruits, which includes several candidates who have been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and appear to be struggling in competitive races.Senator Mitch McConnell has conceded that Republicans have a stronger chance of winning back control of the House than the Senate. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesThe intraparty feuding comes at a fraught moment for Mr. McConnell, who once boasted of being “100 percent focused” on stymieing President Biden’s agenda and appeared confident of his chance to reclaim the mantle of Senate majority leader given Democrats’ tiny margin of control. Those aspirations have dimmed substantially of late as Democrats have racked up a series of legislative accomplishments and Republican candidates have foundered in key contests.Mr. McConnell’s aides have downplayed the significance of his comment about “candidate quality,” arguing that it was designed to spur donors to help underfunded Republicans in the homestretch of the campaign. Mr. McConnell subsequently hosted a fund-raiser in Louisville for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia; Dr. Mehmet Oz, the candidate in Pennsylvania; and Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who is also running for Senate.“Leader McConnell’s been on airplanes and on the phone all month, and that helped make August the biggest month of the cycle so far,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the Senate Leadership Fund, the political action committee Mr. McConnell controls, which has become the main vehicle for donors to support Republican candidates.A spokesman for Mr. McConnell declined to comment.Privately, some Senate campaign operatives have savaged Mr. Scott, saying they were befuddled by his decision to embark last month on an Italian yacht vacation at the same time that the committee was pulling television reservations in critical states, signaling it was losing hope of victories there. The trip was reported by Axios.Mr. Scott has been at odds with Mr. McConnell since Mr. Scott released his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” presenting it as a policy platform for the midterm elections. Mr. McConnell emphatically rejected the plan, telling reporters, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”Mr. Scott has never backed down from promoting his plan. And on Thursday, he took on Mr. McConnell in his strongest words yet.“If you want to trash-talk our candidates to help the Democrats, pipe down,” he wrote in the opinion piece. “That’s not what leaders do.”He added, “When you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them. Now we are at the heart of the matter. Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters.” More

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      Will Democrats Soon Be Locked Out of Power?

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      Throughout the Trump era it was a frequent theme of liberal commentary that their political party represented a clear American majority, thwarted by our antidemocratic institutions and condemned to live under the rule of the conservative minority.In the political context of 2016-20, this belief was overstated. Yes, Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2016 with a minority of the popular vote. But more Americans voted for Republican congressional candidates than Democratic congressional candidates, and more Americans voted for right-of-center candidates for president — including the Libertarian vote — than voted for Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In strictly majoritarian terms, liberalism deserved to lose in 2016, even if Trump did not necessarily deserve to win.And Republican structural advantages, while real, did not then prevent Democrats from reclaiming the House of Representatives in 2018 and the presidency in 2020 and Senate in 2021. These victories extended the pattern of 21st century American politics, which has featured significant swings every few cycles, not the entrenchment of either party’s power.The political landscape after 2024, however, might look more like liberalism’s depictions of its Trump-era plight. According to calculations by liberalism’s Cassandra, David Shor, the convergence of an unfavorable Senate map for Democrats with their pre-existing Electoral College and Senate disadvantages could easily produce a scenario where the party wins 50 percent of the congressional popular vote, 51 percent of the presidential vote — and ends up losing the White House and staring down a nearly filibuster-proof Republican advantage in the Senate.That’s a scenario for liberal horror, but it’s not one that conservatives should welcome either. In recent years, as their advantages in both institutions have increased, conservatives have defended institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College with variations of the argument that the United States is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy.These arguments carry less weight, however, the more consistently undemocratic the system’s overall results become. (They would fall apart completely in the scenario sought by Donald Trump and some of his allies after 2020, where state legislatures simply substitute their preferences for the voters in their states.)The Electoral College’s legitimacy can stand up if an occasional 49-47 percent popular vote result goes the other way; likewise the Senate’s legitimacy if it tilts a bit toward one party but changes hands consistently.But a scenario where one party has sustained governing power while lacking majoritarian support is a recipe for delegitimization and reasonable disillusionment, which no clever conservative column about the constitutional significance of state sovereignty would adequately address.From the Republican Party’s perspective, the best way to avoid this future — where the nature of conservative victories undercuts the perceived legitimacy of conservative governance — is to stop being content with the advantages granted by the system and try harder to win majorities outright.You can’t expect a political party to simply cede its advantages: There will never be a bipartisan constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate, on any timeline you care to imagine. But you can expect a political party to show a little more electoral ambition than the G.O.P. has done of late — to seek to win more elections the way that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won them, rather than being content to keep it close and put their hopes in lucky breaks.Especially in the current climate, which looks dire for the Democrats, the Republicans have an opportunity to make the Electoral College complaint moot, for a time at least, by simply taking plausible positions, nominating plausible candidates and winning majorities outright.That means rejecting the politics of voter-fraud paranoia — as, hopefully, Republican primary voters will do by choosing Brian Kemp over David Perdue in the Georgia gubernatorial primary.It means rejecting the attempts to return to the libertarian “makers versus takers” politics of Tea Party era, currently manifested in Florida Senator Rick Scott’s recent manifesto suggesting tax increases for the working class — basically the right-wing equivalent of “defund the police” in terms of its political toxicity.And it means — and I fear this is beyond the G.O.P.’s capacities — nominating someone other than Donald Trump in 2024.A Republican Party that managed to win popular majorities might still see its Senate or Electoral College majorities magnified by its structural advantages. But such magnification is a normal feature of many democratic systems, not just our own. It’s very different from losing the popular vote consistently and yet being handed power anyway.As for what the Democrats should do about their disadvantages — well, that’s a longer discussion, but two quick points for now.First, to the extent the party wants to focus on structural answers to its structural challenges, it needs clarity about what kind of electoral reforms would actually accomplish something. That’s been lacking in the Biden era, where liberal reformers wasted considerable time and energy on voting bills that didn’t pass and also weren’t likely to help the party much had they been actually pushed through.A different reform idea, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, wouldn’t have happened in this period either, but it’s much more responsive to the actual challenges confronting Democrats in the Senate. So if you’re a liberal activist or a legislator planning for the next brief window when your party holds power, pushing for an expanded Senate seems like a more reasonable long ball to try to train your team to throw.Second, to the extent that there’s a Democratic path back to greater parity in the Senate and Electoral College without structural reform, it probably requires the development of an explicit faction within the party dedicated to winning back two kinds of voters — culturally conservative Latinos and working-class whites — who were part of Barack Obama’s coalition but have drifted rightward since.That faction would have two missions: To hew to a poll-tested agenda on economic policy (not just the business-friendly agenda supported by many centrist Democrats) and to constantly find ways to distinguish itself from organized progressivism — the foundations, the activists, the academics — on cultural and social issues. And crucially, not in the tactical style favored by analysts like Shor, but in the language of principle: Rightward-drifting voters would need to know that this faction actually believes in its own moderation, its own attacks on progressive shibboleths, and that its members will remain a thorn in progressivism’s side even once they reach Washington.Right now the Democrats have scattered politicians, from West Virginia to New York City, who somewhat fit this mold. But they don’t have an agenda for them to coalesce around, a group of donors ready to fund them, a set of intellectuals ready to embrace them as their own.Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and necessity may impose itself upon the Democratic Party soon enough.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      Income Taxes for All? Rick Scott Has a Plan, and That’s a Problem.

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      The “Plan to Rescue America” is dividing the party and cheering Democrats, and its author, Senate Republicans’ top campaign official, won’t stop talking about it.WASHINGTON — Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the somewhat embattled head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said one utterly indisputable thing on Thursday when he stood before a packed auditorium of supporters at the conservative Heritage Foundation: His plan for a G.O.P. majority would make everyone angry at him, Republicans included.It was an odd admission for the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” with its call to impose income taxes on more than half of Americans who pay none now, and to sunset all legislation after five years, presumably including Social Security and Medicare.It has divided his party, put Mr. Scott’s own candidates in awkward positions, and is already featured prominently in Democratic advertising. But after Thursday, it is clear the Republicans have not figured out how to address their Rick Scott problem.“Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people who believe that no conservative idea can ever happen, nothing will change for the better as long as they’re in charge, and that’s why we’re going to get rid of them,” the senator said, ambiguous about who exactly “they” were. “So Republicans are going to complain about the plan. They’ll do it with anonymous quotes, some not so anonymous. They’ll argue that Democrats will use it against us in the election. I hope they do.”The senator insisted on the Heritage Foundation stage that his plan would raise taxes on no one, only to concede to reporters after the talk that it would — or that it wouldn’t, he couldn’t decide.“The people that are paying taxes right now — I’m not going to raise their rates; I’ve never done it,” he said, before adding: “I’m focused on the people that can go to work, and decided to be on a government program and not participate in this. I believe whether it’s just a dollar, we all are in this together.”But most adults who pay no income tax do work, and the plan makes no distinctions. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” it states.Last year, 57 percent of U.S. households paid no income tax, but that was by design. Successive Republican tax cuts, including President Donald J. Trump’s tax cut of 2017, which greatly expanded the standard deduction, took tens of millions of workers off the income tax rolls, though virtually all of them pay Social Security, Medicare and sales taxes.And for all of Mr. Scott’s evasions, the criticism is not coming just from the “militant left” that he denounced. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimated that ensuring all households pay at least $100 in income taxes would leave families making about $54,000 or less with more than 80 percent of the tax increase. Those making less than about $100,000 would shoulder 97 percent of the cost.His leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, right, has repeatedly told Mr. Scott to pipe down about his plan.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” Mr. McConnell told reporters in early March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”For Democrats, Mr. Scott is a gift. The 2022 campaign is shaping up as a conventional midterm, focused on the economy under Democratic control. That means inflation, gas prices and candidate ties to an unpopular president.“If you’re in power and you’re presiding over inflation, sorry, it’s tough to be you,” Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told The Ripon Society, a conservative research group, this week.Mr. Scott’s plan has allowed Democrats to talk about the alternative: what Republicans would do with power. Mr. Scott’s plan is chock-full of language about making children say the Pledge of Allegiance, prohibiting the government from asking citizens their race, ethnicity or skin color, and declaring that “men are men, women are women and unborn babies are babies.”But its economic section has been the focus. Beyond taxing everyone, under the plan, all federal laws would sunset in five years. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” the plan says. Taken literally, that would leave the fate of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to the whims of a Congress that rarely passes anything so expansive.Democrats are gleefully calling attention to it, even going so far as to promote the Republican senator’s speaking engagement on Thursday.“The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has put it on record in a document,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “and we are taking his word for it.”Mr. Scott’s ideas threaten to bring Republicans back to an economic argument they waged — and lost — before Mr. Trump won over wide swaths of white working-class voters with his pledges to leave entitlements alone and cut their taxes.In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, committed a disastrous gaffe when he was caught on tape describing 47 percent of Americans as wealth takers, not wealth makers. In 2001, Jim DeMint, a House member from South Carolina at the time, who like Mr. Romney went on to the Senate, asserted that if more than half of Americans paid no taxes, they would vote to expand government largess for themselves and make others pay for it.“How can a free nation survive when a majority of its citizens, now dependent on government services, no longer have the incentive to restrain the growth of government?” he asked during a Heritage Foundation lecture, calling for all Americans to pay some income taxes.The vision of affluent Republicans counseling struggling workers to pay more taxes while they pay less was central to Mr. Trump’s critique of the party in the 2016 campaign.And Mr. Scott is an unlikely bearer of his revanchist message. He’s the richest man in Congress, worth around $260 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2002, the sprawling hospital chain he ran agreed to pay more than $880 million to settle the Justice Department’s longest-running inquiry into health care fraud, including $250 million returned to Medicare to resolve charges contested by the government.Fellow Republicans are not rushing to embrace Mr. Scott’s plan.“I think it’s good that elected officials put out what they’re for, and so I support his effort to do it,” said Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election in November. “That’s what he’s for.”But for Republican candidates, the issue is getting awkward. In Arizona, Jim Lamon, a Republican seeking to challenge the Democratic incumbent, Senator Mark Kelly, first called the plan “pretty good stuff” only to have his campaign retreat from that embrace.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the plan, “It’s good that people offer ideas.” His Democratic challenger, Representative Val B. Demings, nevertheless ran an ad on social media accusing him of embracing it.At a Republican Senate debate in Ohio on Monday, the current front-runner, Mike Gibbons, called the plan “a great first draft in trying to set some things we all believe in,” adding, “The people that don’t believe them probably shouldn’t be Republicans.”J.D. Vance, a candidate aligned with Mr. Trump’s working-class appeal, fired back: “Why would we increase taxes on the middle class, especially when Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook pay a lower tax rate than any middle-class American in this room or in this country? It’s ridiculous.”Even as he denied his plan would do that, Mr. Scott on Thursday was bold in the criticism of his fellow Republicans, who are relying on him to help them win elections this fall. Timidity is “the kind of old thinking that got us exactly where we are today, where we don’t control the House, the White House or the Senate,” he said, adding: “It’s time to have a plan. It’s time to execute on a plan.” More

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      Can Republicans Win by Just Saying No?

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      History suggests that opposing the party in power is often good enough.In the 1946 midterms, Republicans united around a simple but powerful mantra: “Had enough?”The slogan was the brainchild of Karl Frost, an advertising executive in Boston. In two short words, it promised a rejection of both New Deal liberalism and the monopoly of power Democrats had held in Washington since the 1930s.It helped Republicans that the economy was in chaos. World War II had just ended, and supply chains were going haywire as the U.S. emerged from wartime price controls. Thousands of workers went on strike. Meat was scarce and expensive — so much so that Republican candidates patrolled city streets in trucks booming out the message, “Ladies, if you want meat, vote Republican.” They slapped President Harry Truman with the moniker “Horsemeat Harry.”“This is going to be a damned beefsteak election!” Sam Rayburn, the Democratic speaker of the House, privately fumed. By Election Day, Truman’s approval rating was just 33 percent. Republicans picked up 55 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate, taking power for the first time since 1932.“It was so bad for Truman that people were saying he should resign,” said Jeffrey Frank, author of “The Trials of Harry S. Truman.”This was the year that a young Richard Nixon won his first congressional election, defeating a five-term Democratic incumbent in suburban Los Angeles by running against New Deal “socialism” and for what he called the “forgotten man.” His campaign literature asked: “Are you satisfied with present conditions? Can you buy meat, a new car, a refrigerator, clothes you need?”What’s old is new again.Inflation is way up, some goods are hard to find and Democrats are staring at a similar wipeout in November. And Republicans, as our colleague Jonathan Weisman reports today, are debating just how forthcoming to be about their own plans. Senator Rick Scott, the head of the Republican Senate campaign arm, has an 11-point plan to “rescue America.” House Republicans are working on their “Commitment to America,” a political and policy agenda they plan to release in late summer. And today, Mike Pence, the former vice president, unveiled a 28-page “Freedom Agenda” platform.Some Republicans argue that none of it is really necessary. All they need to do to win back power is point to voters’ frustrations with the high prices of gasoline and groceries and say, essentially: Had enough?“This isn’t rocket science,” said Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist. “The midterms are a referendum on one thing and one thing only: Joe Biden and the Democrats’ failed leadership. Period. End of discussion.”‘What’s Mitch for?’Democrats are eager to turn this fall’s elections into a choice between the two parties rather than a referendum on their own performance.At times, President Biden has tried to corral Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, into defining the party’s agenda. “The fundamental question is, what’s Mitch for? What’s he for on immigration? What’s he for? What’s he proposing?” Biden said in late January, adding: “What are they for? So everything’s a choice. A choice.”A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.McConnell never took the bait. He’s said his focus is “100 percent” on “stopping this new administration” and has avoided presenting ideas that Democrats might be able to attack.“The fundamentals of a midterm election hold: It’s about the party in power,” said Zack Roday, a Republican strategist who is working on several Senate campaigns. “McConnell understands this better than anyone of the last 15 years.”So Democrats have taken to Scott’s plan like a drowning man to a life preserver, highlighting his call for every American to have “skin in the game” by paying taxes and accusing him of wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security. Senate Democrats are running a paid ad on Scott’s plan this week in key swing states, and on Thursday they bought a geo-targeted ad around the Heritage Foundation in Washington, during a speech that Scott gave at the conservative think tank.It’s an article of faith among many on the right that the 1994 “Contract With America” led by Newt Gingrich was responsible for that year’s Republican takeover of Congress. But Republicans in the Senate, led by Bob Dole of Kansas, never embraced it, while polls at the time showed that only a minority of voters had ever heard of the idea. Democrats would later exploit Gingrich’s unpopularity to gain seats in the 1998 midterms, a rare victory for the president’s party.Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who hopes to become speaker of the House, shares Scott’s view that a plan is necessary, though they may differ on the details. At the recent policy retreat for House Republicans, McCarthy explained his hope of presenting Biden with legislation “so strong it could overcome all the politics that other people play.”To which Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a key McCarthy ally, added: “I think it’s real simple: You can’t do what you said if you haven’t said what you’ll do.”President Harry Truman and his daughter, Margaret, voting in Independence, Mo., in 1946. That year, Republicans picked up 55 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate.William J. Smith/Associated Press‘Just criticize rather than be specific’As a political strategy, though, no plan probably beats a plan.“If I were the Republicans, I would just criticize rather than be specific about my remedies, unfortunately,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, a historian of the Republican Party.Michael Barone, the founding editor of the Almanac of American Politics, said he expected Republicans to win back the House and “probably” the Senate, regardless of how specific their plans were. A policy agenda, he said, is more important for determining “how you want to govern” once in power.For Republican leaders today, being in power poses a dilemma of its own. If they do win one or both branches of Congress, Democrats will be able to draw on a playbook made famous by the same president who was so humbled by the slogan “Had enough?” in 1946.Two years after his midterm drubbing, Truman mounted a comeback often hailed as the greatest in American political history, using the “do-nothing Congress” as his political foil.Never mind that Congress had been extraordinarily productive, passing more than 900 bills that included landmark legislation such as the Marshall Plan and the Taft-Hartley Act. Four months before Election Day, with his job approval rating stuck in the 30s, Truman went on offense.“He had just one strategy — attack, attack, attack,” writes David McCullough, another Truman biographer.At campaign stops, Truman called Republicans names like “bloodsuckers” and a “bunch of old mossbacks still living back in 1890.” At one appearance in Roseville, Calif., he said the “do-nothing Congress tried to choke you to death in this valley.” In Fresno, Calif., he said: “You have got a terrible congressman here in this district. He is one of the worst.” And in Iowa, he said the Republican Congress had “stuck a pitchfork in the farmer’s back.”The rest, as they say, is history.What to read tonightBiden announced he would tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve once again, Clifford Krauss and Michael D. Shear report, in a move intended to lower gasoline prices for American consumers.A federal judge in Florida said that sections of the state’s election law were unconstitutional, the first federal court ruling striking down key parts of a major Republican voting law since the 2020 election, Reid J. Epstein and Patricia Mazzei report.According to Alan Feuer, Katie Benner and Maggie Haberman, the Justice Department has widened its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to encompass possible involvement of other government officials.Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, announced he would vote against the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, Annie Karni reports.Some voters in North Carolina think Representative Madison Cawthorn has finally gone too far, Trip Gabriel reports from Cawthorn’s district.FrameworkGov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat who is up for re-election, released an ad that struck an upbeat tone.Jessica Hill for The New York TimesDemocrats’ two paths There’s a lot of doom and gloom across America, something Republican campaigns have leveraged to try to persuade voters to change the status quo and oust Democrats from Congress.It leaves Democrats with a tough decision: empathize with voters’ hardships or put forward a different narrative entirely?In Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat who is up for re-election this year, seems to be taking the second approach. In his first ad of the cycle, he paints a sunny picture, smiling as he strolls through suburban neighborhoods and talks with constituents. He boasts that he turned the state’s deficit into a surplus, while lowering taxes and investing in schools.“A balanced budget, lower taxes — our state is strong and getting stronger,” Lamont declares to the camera.It’s a sharp departure from a Democratic ad we highlighted last month from Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, in which the sun was noticeably absent. Or from another Democratic ad that Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona began running in late February that acknowledged “families are working hard to get by right now.”Governors might have a little more room to highlight state and local achievements than members of Congress. Still, by trying to prove that they’ve improved conditions since the coronavirus pandemic began, Democrats may run the risk of seeming out of touch with their constituents’ day-to-day struggles.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. 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      Why Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell Are Feuding Over Midterm Elections

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      Senator Rick Scott has an 11-point plan to “rescue America.” Senator Mitch McConnell would rather he not.Republican insiders have long worried that they could blow a golden opportunity to retake the Senate this year. And while most are confident that a red wave will still wash enough of their candidates ashore in November to win a majority, some doubt occasionally creeps in.The latest reason: an ongoing disagreement between two of the top Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, and Rick Scott, the leader of the party’s campaign arm. At issue is the “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” that Scott has presented as a platform for the midterms, and that McConnell has emphatically rejected.And while Scott has said that the plan is just his opinion, developed using his own campaign funds, Democrats have been all too happy to pin its provisions on the Republican Party writ large.They’ve seized on one bullet point in particular, which reads: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” That idea polls badly, according to Morning Consult, though other provisions of Scott’s plan are popular.On Thursday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee paid for a truck-mounted billboard to troll Senate Republicans during their one-day retreat. “Senate Republicans’ Plan: Raise Your Taxes,” the billboard read.Never mind that McConnell has brushed back Scott, telling reporters at the Capitol last week, “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda. We will focus instead on what the American people are concerned about: inflation, energy, defense, the border and crime.”McConnell also made it clear who was in charge. “If we’re fortunate enough to have the majority next year, I’ll be the majority leader,” he said. “I’ll decide, in consultation with my members, what to put on the floor.”Scott defended himself last week in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, saying his plan had “hit a nerve” with Washington elites, whom he accused of misleading voters about the sustainability of federal deficits and entitlement programs.“Part of the deception is achieved by disconnecting so many Americans from taxation,” he wrote. “It’s a genius political move. And it is bankrupting us.”Scott’s plan has some powerful backers, including the Heritage Foundation, which plans to host him for an event later this month. The think tank has long advocated “broadening the base,” the preferred term on the right for increasing the number of Americans who are subject to taxation.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Conservatives in this country are demanding an ambitious, conservative agenda,” said Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. “Therefore, it excites us to see members talking that way.”Democrats dust off a playbookScott’s plan is a fortuitous turn of events for Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, Democrats say.“Chuck, I’m sure, is salivating,” said Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide who is now an executive vice president at Third Way, a center-left think tank.In the first sentence of a letter to his Senate colleagues this week, Schumer wrote, “As Senate Republicans debate their plan to increase taxes on millions of working Americans, Senate Democrats have focused on ways to get rising prices under control to help working families.”Senate Democrats are considering holding hearings, and possibly a series of votes, to highlight Scott’s plan and to force Republicans to take uncomfortable positions on it.It’s a playbook that Schumer has run before. In 1995, as a member of the House representing New York, he used Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” to accuse Republicans of trying to force cuts in popular spending programs. Gingrich, who became the speaker of the House in 1995 — either because or despite that plan, depending on whom you ask — has embraced Scott’s platform.“That was probably the first thing that Chuck did that showed him as a national political leader,” recalled Kessler. With Scott’s plan, he said of Schumer, “I’m sure he sees it and says to himself, ‘I’ve taken this apart before.’”Privately, Democrats are realistic about their chances of hanging onto the Senate, and say they must seize the “gift” Scott has given them to force Republicans onto the defensive. On the day of the State of the Union, for instance, Senate Democrats ran an ad accusing McConnell of fighting “for the same wealthy insiders who get rich by keeping prices high.”During their own retreat on Wednesday, Democrats heard a presentation by Geoff Garin, a pollster, that impressed many of the senators present. Garin’s surveys have found that more voters blame the coronavirus pandemic, “China and foreign supply chains” and “large corporations raising prices to increase their profits” than they do President Biden for inflation.“The bottom line here is that Democrats have a very strong case to prosecute on rising costs,” Garin said.Republicans see the attack on Scott as a desperation play in what could be a difficult election for Senate Democrats, who must defend incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire while trying to pick up seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“If I were them, I would try to use it, too,” said Justin Sayfie, a Republican consultant who runs an influential Florida political news website. “But they’re going to have to put a lot of money behind it. How much penetration are they going to be able to get with a message about Rick Scott?”Two visions of how to winMcConnell and Scott have a fundamental difference of opinion about how to win the Senate, people who have studied both men say.There’s McConnell, the calculating insider, who is leery of putting forward a political agenda that could open Republicans up to Democrats’ attacks. Republicans have long memories of how, in past election cycles, Democrats have had success in accusing them of wanting to cut popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.“McConnell hates variables,” said Kessler, the former Schumer aide. “He’s like a boxer who likes to cut off the sides of the ring.”In January, when a reporter asked McConnell what his agenda might be if Republicans retake the majority, he replied simply: “That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”Then there’s Scott, the ambitious outsider, a former businessman whose presidential aspirations are no secret. He’s rankled some of his fellow Republican senators by taking broad swipes at Washington — despite leading the committee in charge of electing more of them.And while they share the same goal of winning back the Senate, aides and allies of both men have sniped at one another through the press, particularly over their relationship with Donald Trump.Scott has cultivated a relationship with the former president — he made sure to send copies of his plan to Mar-a-Lago — while McConnell at times has condemned Trump, who in turn refers to the Senate minority leader as “the Old Crow.” Trump has even tried to recruit Scott as a future majority leader, according to a Politico account.McConnell’s office declined to comment.“There will always be critics, but we don’t waste much time worrying about the opinions of Democrat operatives or anonymous Washington consultants,” said Chris Hartline, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Scott chairs. Asked what the Heritage Foundation would say to Senate leaders like McConnell, Roberts said, “We’re grateful for their service, and we’re looking forward to them embracing Senator Scott’s plan or coming up with a plan of their own.”What to read The U.S. Census Bureau says the 2020 census seriously undercounted the number of Hispanic, Black and Native American residents, even though its overall population count of 323.2 million was largely accurate, Michael Wines and Maria Cramer report.In February, the Consumer Price Index rose at its fastest pace in 40 years. Biden blamed Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for the increase, though inflation has been a problem for months, Jeanna Smialek reports.As oil prices rise, many governments are working to boost global production, potentially neglecting longer-term efforts to cut use of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Brad Plumer, Lisa Friedman and David Gelles report.postcardVice President Kamala Harris called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, during a visit to Poland on Thursday.Andrzej Lange/EPA, via ShutterstockTwo V.P.s, one message for UkraineThe world got a glimpse of two potential future presidents today, in what we’re told was a sheer coincidence.Vice President Kamala Harris was visiting Poland, where she met with the country’s leaders, called for an investigation into potential war crimes by the Russian military, held a round-table event with displaced survivors from the war in Ukraine and appeared with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada in a show of Western solidarity.It so happened that her predecessor, Mike Pence, was in Ukraine on the same day as Harris’s trip. Along with his wife, Karen, he met with some of the refugees who are living in camps near the border with Poland. As Pence noted on Twitter, more than 2 million Ukrainians have fled the country over the last 12 days, according to U.N. figures.Pence’s trip comes as the former vice president tries to establish himself as a leader of the Republican Party on foreign policy ahead of a possible 2024 run. Last week, Pence blasted unnamed people in the party who, he said, were “apologists for Putin,” the Russian leader.Our colleague, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent, was traveling with Harris and sending dispatches from Poland all day long. According to a background briefing by an unnamed senior administration official, he reported, teams for the former vice president and the current vice president were “not in contact.”Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More