Rick Scott disses ‘disingenuous’ Mitch McConnell as war of words continues

The feud continues.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott continues to squabble with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over Scott’s “12-point plan to rescue America,” which includes a suggestion that federal programs be reviewed every five years.

During an appearance on the Fox News Channel, the Florida Senator responded to the latest excoriation of his proposal from the leader of the Senate Republicans, yet another flare-up in an increasingly hot war.

He described McConnell’s argument as “disingenuous” and said the Kentucky Republican was part of the “Washington establishment” in his latest heated remarks on the subject.

“It’s nice to get attacked by the Washington establishment, because it tells everybody I actually represent Floridians,” Scott told host Martha MacCallum.

The Senator said his plan to “rescue America” includes a provision that “Congress ought to tell you how they’re going to preserve Medicare and Social Security that are going bankrupt.”

“Now, they say if I said in there we ought to review programs every five years, they said somehow that’s a cut. Well, you know what? What do we do on defense? There’s no 40-year plan for defense. There’s no 100-year plan for defense. Every year we go through the defense budget. So if you don’t support a 100-year defense plan, you must be cutting defense every year,” Scott mockingly asserted.

“This is disingenuous. I don’t believe that we should ever be reducing Medicare or Social Security benefits. But guess what? $31.5 trillion worth of debt. When we get to $45 trillion in debt, is somebody going to take this stuff seriously and save these programs?”

Scott’s comments came after McConnell yet again distanced himself from an uncharitable framing of the Floridian’s policy proposal last year, which contends Scott wants to slash those programs.

“Let me say one more time: there is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell said, offering a seeming shiv of Scott’s less than successful stewardship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“As you recall there was some confusion last year about what the agenda of the Republican Senate might be if we were in the majority,” he said. “I made it quite clear that as the likely majority, as I hoped at that time, Social Security and Medicare were not on our agenda. Period.”

“This continues to come up. The President brought this up during his State of the Union,” McConnell added.

McConnell added that he “noticed that the Speaker of the House said the same thing. So on Social Security, it is not an issue between the parties.”

The hurt feelings, which started roughly a year ago, have festered more as time went on. After the Midterm Elections, when Scott’s promise to flip the Senate Republican as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee went unfulfilled, the Florida Senator mustered just 10 votes in an ill-fated leadership challenge to McConnell.

More recently, Scott has complained about McConnell’s move to remove him from Commerce, framing it as retributive and “pretty petty” McConnell denies “reprisal” or “animus” drove the omission.

“This is what happens when you challenge leadership,” Scott said. “It was McConnell’s decision to remove someone who has actually run businesses and ran the third-largest state from a committee I’ve served on for four years. You’ll have to ask him why.”