Partisan Fighting Flares Over Medicaid Funding

At the beginning of critical markups on Republicans’ “one big, beautiful” budget bill, Democrats made clear that they would resist all of the proposed cuts to Medicaid funding.

Passage of the budget reconciliation bill is necessary to extend President Donald Trump’s first term 2017 tax cuts and to fund border security.

The main disconnect between the two parties is over the potential consequences of the $880 billion in cuts in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Republicans assert that their policy changes—such as verification of enrollees’ income and citizenship, as well as reducing payments to states that fund illegal immigrants’ health care—will strengthen and preserve, rather than hurt, Medicaid.

“We make no apologies about prioritizing Americans in need over illegal immigrants and those who are capable, but choose not to work,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky. 

The proposed Medicaid reforms are much more moderate than those offered by fiscal hawks such as Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who wants cuts across the board to federal matching of state Medicaid payments to expansion enrollees.

Democrats, however, are painting the proposals in the bleakest of colors—claiming that Republicans are taking away health care to finance tax cuts for billionaires.

“I’m tired of the bulls–t about waste and fraud,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., at a pre-markup press conference.

She stood at a lectern with signage that read “Fund families, not billionaires.”

 “Republicans have proposed several plans to cut Medicaid, and they’re going to do this under that guise … of trimming the fat and reducing inefficiency,” she said.

At the beginning of the markup, Democrats spoke for nearly two hours of specific constituents who would suffer if they lost their Medicaid.

Holding up pictures of their constituents and pointing to some guests in the crowd, they advanced the idea that Republicans would take away Americans’ health care coverage, killing vulnerable people.

“This is a betrayal. Republicans are butchering Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and they’re carving it up so billionaires … like [Elon] Musk and [Jeff] Bezos and the others can have a tax break,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas.

That prompted impassioned rebuttals from Republicans.

“[It’s] not fair for people to be lied to and to be scared on purpose for political reasons. Read the bill,” said Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., also rejected Democrats’ claims that ordinary Americans would have their Medicaid stripped. 

“I’m not sure they’ve read this legislation,” he said. 

“We just heard the other side say there are no illegals receiving Medicaid benefits. Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 1.4 million illegals are getting in line ahead of the 6-year-old boy in my District who deserves Medicaid,” the North Carolina lawmaker said.

“And the system is going broke, and that means that the vulnerable among us are going to lose their coverage if we listen to the other side,” Hudson said.

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