Marjorie Taylor Greene complains about “socialist” Medicare

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, on Sunday spoke critically about initiatives including Medicare, which she described as “socialist,” complaining that President Joe Biden wants to enhance them.

During her speech at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Georgia congresswoman spoke about welfare programs that were introduced during the Biden and President Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, noting that both Democrats had similar political careers.

“Lyndon B. Johnson is very similar to Joe Biden….they’re both Democrats socialists, Lyndon B. Johnson was the majority leader in the Senate. He was vice president to [John F.] Kennedy. Joe [Biden] was vice president to [former President Barack] Obama,” she said.

The GOP lawmaker continued: “His [Johnson’s] big socialist programs were the Great Society [program]…to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity and big labor and labor unions,” she said, comparing the program to Biden’s Build Back Better plan—a spending package that focused on lowering costs for families, improving public education, and expanding Medicare coverage, among other goals.

Greene said that Johnson expanded on public investments directed towards social infrastructure and environmental programs that was introduced under former President Franklin Roosevelt that now “Joe Biden is attempting to complete: socialism.”

“Meanwhile, we are now $32 trillion dollars in debt with record high homelessness, 40-year record inflation, we’re losing the U.S. Dollar as the number one world currency. We’re losing our freedoms. Our government is one big fat bloated machine and it’s killing the American dream…and now we find ourselves on the verge of another pointless foreign war,” the GOP lawmaker added.

Newsweek reached out by email to Greene’s media office for comment.

In 1965, Johnson signed the Social Security Amendment Act, which is also known as the Medicare and Medicaid Act, into law. The act established Medicaid as a health insurance program for low-income families, while Medicare targeted the elderly. Millions of elderly people in America found relief through the 1965 Medicare amendment, according to the White House biography page about the former president.

In addition, Greene spoke on Sunday about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a defense bill that sets funding and policy agenda for the Department of Defense (DOD). The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2024 NDAA on Friday, mostly along party lines, with four Democrats siding with Republicans to support amendments made by the GOP that touched on issues such as access to abortion and transgender care for military personnel.

The congresswoman added that the NDAA is the “most important” bill, but she has a “problem” with the way it is now because it has funding for the Russia-Ukraine war. Western nations, including NATO members, have been sending financial and military aid to help the Eastern European country defeat Russia, including advanced defense equipment and tanks, since last February when the war was launched.

“That [the war in Ukraine] does nothing to protect our borders, and that’s your hard-earned tax dollars,” Greene told the crowd. “We’re funding them with equipment, we’re funding them with ammunition…Biden’s war in Ukraine, a proxy war with Russia, has depleted our military. Our military is the weakest it has been in decades and decades.”