On Wednesday, President Donald Trump endorsed a House Republican budget plan that would impose hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare program jointly funded by federal and state money, which helps provide coverage for Americans with lower incomes, including pregnant women, children and people with disabilities, among others..
Trump endorsed the plan over another Senate proposal, which sought to pass much of his legislative agenda through two separate bills. Trump, who had previously said either plan was fine with him, said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday that the House plan was better, in his mind, because it puts most everything he wants into “one big beautiful bill.”
“[T]he House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!” Trump wrote in his post.
The bill Trump has endorsed would make over $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is sometimes referred to as food stamps. According to the bill, Medicaid would see around $880 billion in cuts from that total, with SNAP losing around $230 billion in funding.
The endorsement of that bill came just hours after Trump said during a Fox News interview on Tuesday evening that he wouldn’t allow large cuts to several social welfare programs, including Medicaid.
“Social Security … Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched,” Trump promised.
Trump was ambiguous over his plans for Medicaid during the 2024 presidential campaign, as his platform didn’t even mention the program that helps tens of millions of Americans. Spokespersons on his campaign also said he would “protect” Medicaid, although during his first term as president, Trump did try unsuccessfully to pass a budget that would make significant cuts.
The gutting of Medicaid is a featured part of Project 2025, a far right manifesto assembled by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups that aimed to provide the next Republican president with a blueprint for how to govern. Although Trump tried to distance himself from that document, he has since used executive orders to attempt to implement many aspects of it — and the project’s attacks on Medicaid could be next through this legislation.
Beyond removing a needed safeguard for people who cannot afford health insurance, the plan to gut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars would also diminish the earnings of people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the bottom fifth of income earners would see their household incomes diminish by 7.4 percent if the GOP’s spending cuts are approved. Meanwhile, an extension of the Trump tax cuts from 2017 would only increase their incomes by 0.6 percent.
For the top 1 percent of income earners, cuts to Medicaid would have zero impact on their household incomes, while extending the Trump tax cuts would increase their earnings by nearly 4 percent, the analysis found.
“Health coverage is expensive in the U.S., and the value of Medicaid’s coverage is equal to a huge share of the total income of poorer families,” Josh Bivens, chief economist for EPI, wrote in a recent blog post.
Critics are blasting Republicans and Trump for putting Medicaid on the chopping block of spending cuts, while simultaneously proposing tax cuts that would mainly benefit the super-wealthy in the U.S.
“There’s over 70 million Americans who get Medicaid … [including] seniors in long-term care, over 30 million children, Americans with disabilities,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said on Wednesday. “It also is the lifeblood for some of our critical access to rural hospitals, community health clinics, et cetera. Without Medicaid, many of those would disappear.”
MSNBC producer Steve Benen, writing his thoughts in a blog post, questioned how Trump could take one view of protecting Medicaid on one day while advocating for a piece of legislation that would make draconian cuts to the program the next day.
“Maybe he was lying during his Fox interview. Maybe he doesn’t know what’s in the House GOP plan he endorsed. Maybe he assumes the public won’t notice the contradiction,” Benen wrote. “Whatever the explanation, Trump’s incoherence both complicates his own party’s legislative strategy and imperils the future of a health care program that helps protect tens of millions of Americans.”
“Republicans are cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax breaks for the richest 1% of Americans,” Americans For Tax Fairness, a progressive tax advocacy organization, wrote in a social media post. “They are literally taking $1.1 TRILLION away from you, and giving it to the wealthiest people in the country.”
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