Democrats incensed with White House over Social Security, Medicare

Long-simmering tensions between the White House and congressional Democrats on how best to address the country’s debt boiled over Friday, with leaders and rank-and-file members alike fuming at reports that President Obama is mulling cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan debt-limit deal.

“What I’ve heard from people you might not expect to hear it from ... is if they bring to the Senate a [deal] that really comes down heavy on working families and children and the elderly and they expect me to matter-of-factly vote for it, they’ll have another thing coming,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Friday morning.

In a Friday afternoon news conference, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), emerging from what she called a “lively” House Democratic Caucus meeting, declared that Democrats “would not reduce the deficit or subsidize tax cuts for the rich on the backs of America’s seniors.”

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