I call it the great bait-and-switch.
Betraying his promise not to cut Medicaid, President Trump has pushed through Congress a budget that will require the deepest cut to Medicaid in history, while gutting programs and services that are essential to the health, safety, and financial security of millions of average Americans.
Trump and his allies in Congress are betraying the working-class Americans who trusted them to feed the insatiable greed of billionaires.
In fact, even swiping food from the tables of working families and stripping health care from children and disabled Americans isn’t enough; future generations must be burdened with debt so today’s wealthiest can reap even more. With this week’s vote, Congress not only agreed to slash $1.5 trillion from programs that benefit communities, but also to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion — all to pay for an astonishing windfall for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans.
While the Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers continue to claim they won’t cut Medicaid benefits, they’re all fully aware that the budget to which they’ve committed absolutely requires cutting Medicaid benefits. Every member of Congress received a memo from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirming it is impossible to cut $1.5 trillion in spending without slashing Medicaid.
Nearly every Republican in both the House and the Senate voted for the budget anyway.
Adding insult to injury, the gutting of the social safety net comes just as many more Americans are likely to need to rely on it, as a chaotic tariff policy risks massive job loss and soaring inflation.
The cuts to Medicaid that the budget requires endanger the health and financial security of more than 70 million children, seniors, people with disabilities and working families, according to a report issued last month by the National Urban League and 10 other leading civil rights and health equity organizations. While the cuts threaten Americans of all backgrounds, communities of color would suffer especially widespread harm: nearly 42 million people, or approximately a third of all people of color in the U.S., rely on Medicaid for health care.
Achieving the spending cuts to which Congress committed will require either:
— Stripping health care away from every single one of the 31 million children covered by Medicaid,
— Ending coverage for all adults age 65 and older who use Medicaid to obtain essential health care; or
— 75 percent of all Medicaid funding for nursing home services or home and community-based care for older adults and people with disabilities.
Please visit www.triceedneywire.com to read more.