Budget: Will the GOP cut entitlements?

House Republicans “want to gut Medicaid,” said Michael Kinnucan in The New York Times. By a two-vote margin, with no Democratic support, the GOP majority last week passed a “budget resolution” for fiscal year 2025. And despite President Trump’s repeated promises not to “touch” entitlements, that plan seeks to partially offset the $4.5 trillion cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts by hacking up to $880 billion from Medicaid, the medical assistance program that covers 79 million Americans, including half of all U.S. children. The resolution is just a statement of principles, and will have to survive the Senate and more House votes. Some GOP senators from states that expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act have vowed to protect the program. “Anything that slashes into benefits for people who are working, I’m not going to be for,” said Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Let’s hope the Senate kills “this cruel plan,” said the San Antonio Express-News in an editorial. The cuts would devastate rural hospitals that rely on Medicaid, and for many poor Americans could be “the difference between life and death.”

Every GOP budget makes liberals “shriek about draconian spending cuts,” said National Review. But this latest plan is modest—“really, too modest”—if the goal is to tackle America’s debt crisis. All told, the resolution shaves a mere $2 trillion off the $86 trillion the federal government is set to spend over the next decade, and would add nearly $3 trillion to the deficit over that period. As for Medicaid cuts, said Eric Boehm in Reason, the resolution tasks the House committee that oversees the program with saving $880 billion overall. There are “plenty of ways” to find that cash without “throwing needy Americans off Medicaid.” With the government borrowing ever more money to cover interest payments on the national debt, it would be fiscally foolish to balk at asking states to shoulder more of Medicaid’s cost, say, or imposing work requirements on able-bodied recipients.

Then why are Republicans “secretly freaking out?” asked Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling in The New Republic. Last week’s vote was an impressive show of unity for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s fractious majority, and a win for President Trump, who worked the phones to keep skittish lawmakers in line. But with the resolution “in the rearview,” many are privately fretting that their vote could “bite them in the midterms.” Historically, “things don’t go well” for parties who tinker with Americans’ health care, said Mary Ellen Klas in Bloomberg. With Medicaid recipients disproportionately clustered in states that voted for Trump—about 20 percent of Missouri residents are on the program, and 32 percent in Louisiana—even discussions of cuts represent a “huge political gamble” for Republicans.

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That’s why Trump is the “perfect president” to reform entitlements, said Dace Potas in USA Today. Ineligible to run in 2028, he has no personal fear of a voter backlash, while the last month has shown that he “has the stomach” for risky spending cuts. Yes, slashing Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security would hurt Republicans for a cycle or two, but isn’t that a price worth paying for “meaningful and lasting” spending reform? That’s probably the plan, said James Downie in MSNBC.com. For anyone who thought Trump might be constrained by his promises to not touch entitlements, last week’s Medicaid “pirouette” should be a wake-up call. In his zeal for enriching the rich and further immiserating the poor, this president is not unduly concerned with “keeping a story straight.”