A fourth recording from a private fundraiser has put Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton's views on federal benefit programs into the Texas Senate race less than two weeks before early voting begins.
In audio obtained by The Texas Tribune and published Thursday, Paxton, the state's attorney general, answers a question about reducing the federal deficit by saying "reasonable cuts to mandatory spending" will be necessary. "Or there is no solution. That's just the reality. We have to suck it up," he says in the clip.
The remarks came at a Sept. 24 lunch on Capitol Hill hosted by two lobbyists from the Washington firm Williams & Jensen and attended by about a dozen people, mostly lobbyists, according to the Tribune. An attendee who opposes Paxton's campaign made the recording, and two other people who were there confirmed details of the conversation to the Tribune.
Earlier clips from the same event went to The New York Times, Politico and Axios.
What Paxton said, and what he says now
In the recording, Paxton paired spending cuts with tax policy meant to spur economic growth and said deficit spending under presidents of both parties would "bankrupt us." He did not name programs he would cut or say by how much.
Most mandatory federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the Tribune, citing the Congressional Budget Office, put their share at about three-quarters in the most recent fiscal year.
In a statement to the Tribune after the story ran, Paxton said he would protect Social Security, calling it "a sacred promise" that seniors paid into, and named cracking down on fraud as a major way to cut the deficit. "The fake news keeps spinning the same cherry-picked audio to mislead Texans and take my words out of context," he said.
"I have never said I would take away entitlements from those who deserve or earned them." He did not answer the Tribune's questions about which programs he would target.
