plan in 1975 that like rick scott sunset, all federal legislation without exemptions for social security and medicare . and what s interesting, which we found was this was actually the first federal sunset bill ever to be introduced. another interesting thing here is that, like rick scott, who biden was attacking, saying, well, you know, he said, never mind now he doesn t want to sunset, medicare and social security biden actually introduced in his own bill, exemptions later in later years that would exempt both of these programs. now biden has also been open to raising to the retirement age in the 19 eighties. specifically he said, several times he wanted to push the retirement age up to 68 or 70, whatever aligned with actuarial tables and in 2005, he even said he was willing to discuss benefit cuts. take a listen to this clip. i want to
years is to hike taxes on the wealthy. there, no clear direction where it goes. already there are people fighting any talk of reigning in entitlements in this country. what do you think? well, that s right. we know that certainly if there s one thing that cannot be debated is the fact that we ll have to make some changes to our social security program. here like in many other places around the world, we made huge promises without any plan to how to keep them. politicians should be telling this directly but they re running away. the truth is they don t do anything, ten years from now, we won t have much the money to pay social security benefits that have been promised and there will be automatic across the board benefit cuts of about 22%. that is a stupid way to fix social security if i m being blunt. there s lots of options that we could think about, different revenues, looking at the retirement age, looking at how
what we will do. the president, good for him for putting out a plan to extend the solvency for medicare. many people won t like it. they can offer and alternative. there s no free lunch here. there s no magic. we have to figure out what combination people want. he s not doing the same on social security and we should take the political promise that they won t touch current retirees seriously. they should be worried if they keep promising not to do anything because they will have those across the board benefit cuts. if we have reforms, it will be spread out over more people, more generations. neil: and you can look at a variety of options. the grace commission came up with ideas that kind of zinged everybody but did extend the lie of social security. we have to extend it. we ll see how it goes. thanks very much. thank you. neil: maya macguineas on that.
the prices at supermarkets now and the s.n.a.p. benefits reduced, and people are just going to need more help. reporter: elderly americans could be hardest hit by these benefit cuts. that s what experts say, as they are the ones to receive the minimum monthly benefits. jericka. astrid martinez for us tonight, thank you. to the kennedy space center in florida now. this is launch pad 39-a, once used to launch saturn rockets and astronauts to the moon. now the spacex rocket is set to blast off at 1:45 a.m. eastern, carrying a crew of four to the international space station. cbs s mark strassmann is there. reporter: after months of training, this crew, like all astronauts before them, recognizes certain truths about life in space. it can be unpredictable and unforgiving. russian flight controllers have been noticing a stream of particles coming out of the soyuz ms-22 vehicle.