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As House Republicans scramble to pass a massive reconciliation package this week, there’s some uncertainty as to whether GOP leaders have the votes to advance their legislation. Some House Freedom Caucus members want to move the bill to the right; some of the party’s members from competitive districts believe the plan is already too conservative; and with a tiny majority in the chamber, there’s uncertainty about what will happen if the bill comes to the floor in a day or two.
With this in mind, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team invited Donald Trump to Capitol Hill, assuming that the president could convince House Republican members — or more to the point, enough House Republican members — to hold their noses and pass the legislation.
To that end, Trump specifically addressed one of the most controversial elements of the bill during a brief Q&A with reporters on Capitol Hill.
“We’re not doing any cutting of anything meaningful,” the president claimed. “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse. With Medicaid — waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse. … We have illegal aliens that are multiple killers with multiple murder records getting Medicaid. I don’t think anybody minds that we cut that.”
He added that he and his party are “not changing Medicaid.” Soon after, during his remarks to House GOP lawmakers, the president reportedly told his allies behind closed doors not to “f— around” with Medicaid.
So, a few things.
First, rhetoric like this might not help as much as Trump might think. There are plenty of far-right Republicans who are demanding, among other things, dramatic and structural changes to the existing Medicaid program. When the president says that the GOP isn’t “changing Medicaid,” that’s roughly the point at which several Freedom Caucus members effectively respond, “We know; that’s the problem.”
Second, the idea that Medicaid is providing benefits to undocumented immigrants who’ve committed multiple murders is utterly bonkers: Whether Trump understands the policy details or not, in reality, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid.
Third, the president might want the public to believe that his party’s legislation isn’t “cutting of anything meaningful,” and Medicaid will be left largely intact, but reality tells a very different story. In order to afford costly tax cuts, the Republican bill includes significant Medicaid cuts that, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, would leave millions of struggling Americans without health care coverage.
But stepping back, there’s another element to all of this that’s easy to get lost in the shuffle: Didn’t Trump promise not to cut Medicaid?
The answer, of course, is yes. In fact, about a month into his second term, the president declared during one of his many Fox News interviews, “Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched.” It was not a one-off: Trump has repeatedly told Americans that Medicaid would be just fine on his watch.
Those who assumed he’d go back on his word were, not surprisingly, entirely correct, and we’re just now starting to see Trump’s rationalization for his broken promise: He’s not cutting Medicaid, the argument goes, so much as he’s cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.”
That’s plainly and demonstrably wrong, but the public should expect to hear the lie quite a bit in the coming days, weeks and months.
