The polls clearly show that over three quarters of the population doesn’t want any cuts in benefits in Social Security, or any cuts in benefits for Medicare, in order to be able to reduce the deficit. What they want, a majority, want cuts in the defense budget, and they want an end to the war in Afghanistan to reduce the deficit. And instead what we are seeing is this artificial creation [of a crisis], right after we saw a real crisis. We saw a real crisis in Hurricane Sandy, and that’s what a real crisis looks like. An artificial crisis is being instituted to steal from us, to steal from the Middle Class, and to steal from people in need.

The Democratic Party should be united. We are the Party that created Social Security. We are the Party that created Medicare. We should stand behind it. We should protect it. It’s amazingly popular among the voters. Why should we shoot ourselves in the head by saying we’re going to end these programs, we’re going to cut back these programs, when we created them and the voters love them?