Is Biden "Status Quo Joe" on Social Security and Medicare?

This week and next week we have big Tuesday votes in the Democratic primaries. The delegate count is currently effectively tied between Bernie Sanders and the guy Ryan Grim reports on here: Fact Check: Joe Biden Has Advocated Cutting Social Security for 40 Years The Intercept 01/13/2020.

He reports:

And after a Republican wave swept Congress in 1994, Biden’s support for cutting Social Security, and his general advocacy for budget austerity, made him a leading combatant in the centrist-wing battle against the party’s retreating liberals in the 1980s and ’90s.

“When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he told the Senate in 1995. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” (A freeze would have reduced the amount that would be paid out, cutting the program’s benefit.)

The following TYT clip shows Some of the times which Grim chronicles in which Biden emphasized wanted to cut Social Security, Joe Biden: Cut Medicare And Social Security 12/17/2018, this from over a year ago:

On Social Security and Medicare, he's spent his career not as Status Quo Joe but as Worse-Then-Status Quo Joe.

In the cut-Medicare-and-Social-Security political rhetoric, there are several stock formulations that we need to notice whenever they come up:

"Rich people don't need Social Security benefits so the benefits should be means-tested." Translation: If we make Social Security a means-tested program we can then call it a "welfare program" and that would be a great talking point for those of us who want to cut it.

"We need to make sure Social Security and Medicare are still her for our children and grandchildren." Translation: Raise the eligibility age on Social Security and Medicare.

"Entitlement reform" Translation: This always means "I want to cut Social Security and Medicare."

Here's Biden's current line, from yesterday:

Translation: "Even though for decades of my career in public service pushing to cut Social Security and Medicare, I won't do that now and I'll even try expand their benefits, honest I will!"

As Ryan Grim notes:

Biden himself, at least on his campaign website, now supports making Social Security more generous, not less. But that’s at odds with decades of his own advocacy, a record that could become a major political liability among voters concerned Biden will finally get his wish to trim back Social Security checks. Because about half of black seniors on Social Security rely on it as their primary means of support, any trimming of the program hits those beneficiaries particularly hard. [my emphasis]