It's "alarmist" to think that a Texas judge's ruling to suspend the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone will disrupt the agency's approvals on other drugs, Sen Bill Cassidy said Sunday.
"When did the FDA go above the law?" the Louisiana Republican said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It can ignore the Administrative Procedure Act, which every other agency has to follow theoretically, but they don’t have to. I think that’s alarmist and I also think that the FDA should not be above the law."
Cassidy added that the accelerated pathway for drug approval was to allow it to treat an illness, and "it's a stretch to call a pregnancy an illness… obviously, we know what happens to the unborn baby."
Further, he said he believes the rulings on abortion will end up working out through state decisions.
"I'm my state, we are a pro-life state," said Cassidy. We have legislation that is far more pro-life than it is in say, California. But the Californians keep their law and we keep our law and that's the way it's going to work out nationally."
The senator, meanwhile, said he believes the Supreme Court's ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, which overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, was the right move.
"I think Dobbs is the uncomfortable middle ground where people will confront that there’s a diversity of opinion and no one group has the ability to impose their will upon the other, and so Dobbs, I think, was the correct decision," said Cassidy, who is also a physician.
Host Chuck Todd asked Cassidy for his opinion on the fight concerning cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and the senator said that both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have the same plan, which is to do nothing for now and allow a cut to benefits of 24% when the fund goes insolvent in about 8 or 9 years.
"That makes it harder," he said. "When your leading presidential candidates have made the decision to deceive the American people and to say there isn't a problem when every actuary who looks at this says that there is a problem, and someone who's currently receiving — 80 years old, otherwise would be in poverty — will get a 24% cut in their benefits by current law, it makes it very hard when they are so irresponsible. It is true for President Biden. It is true for former President Trump."
Instead, Cassidy said he backs a plan to create a fund separate from Social Security that allows $1.5 trillion to be invested in the nation's economy.
"There's no risk borne by the beneficiary and there are no Social Security dollars put into this separate fund," Cassidy said. "We allow it to sit there and we allow it to grow, and at the end, it bridges, helps bridge Social Security's sustainability. All the risk is borne by the fund."
But both Trump and Biden are "demagoguing" the plan, said Cassidy.
"We need honesty with the American people, but we have a big idea that'll solve 75% of the problem, and that's a pretty good idea," he added.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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