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CBO Report Confirms 'Republicans Are Lying' About Medicaid Cuts
"Their plan would force the largest Medicaid cuts in American history—all to pay for more tax giveaways to billionaires," said Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle.
Mar 06, 2025
At a press conference last week, U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise claimed Democrats are lying when they warn that Medicaid is in the Republican Party's crosshairs.
"The word Medicaid is not even in this bill," Scalise (R-La.) declared, waving the text of a budget resolution that House Republicans went on to pass over unified Democratic opposition.
But an analysis released late Wednesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) makes clear that deep cuts to Medicaid would be required under the House GOP resolution, which President Donald Trump has endorsed.
The analysis, produced at the request of leading House Democrats, shows that Medicaid accounts for 93% of projected mandatory spending under the jurisdiction of the House Energy and Commerce Committee over the next decade, not including Medicare.
That means Republicans would have to cut Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), or Medicare to achieve the $880 billion in spending reductions that the House budget resolution instructs the energy and commerce panel to impose between fiscal years 2025 and 2034.
"This analysis from the nonpartisan CBO confirms what we've been saying all along: Republicans are lying about their budget," said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "Their plan would force the largest Medicaid cuts in American history—all to pay for more tax giveaways to billionaires."
I keep hearing Republicans claim their budget doesn't cut Medicaid. We all know that's a lie — so I asked the nonpartisan CBO to look into it. Their analysis confirms it: the Republican budget delivers the largest Medicaid cuts in history to pay for giveaways to billionaires.
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— Rep. Brendan Boyle (@congressmanboyle.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 5:45 PM
According to the CBO, just $135 billion in spending under the House Energy and Commerce Committee's jurisdiction over the next decade would be available for cuts when excluding Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, and programs that are "budget-neutral with revenues offsetting spending."
That would leave the GOP far short of the $880 billion in energy and commerce spending reductions proposed in the House budget resolution, which still must make its way through the Republican-controlled Senate before the GOP can move ahead with Trump's legislative agenda.
The CBO's analysis comes a day after Trump neglected to mention Medicaid during his first address to Congress of his second term, a decision that one advocate said confirms the president "knows his plan to cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid is so deeply unpopular that he would rather sweep it under the rug."
Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Wednesday that the CBO analysis "confirms what we've been saying all along: The math doesn't work without devastating Medicaid cuts."
"The reality is the only way Republicans can cut at least $880 billion within the Energy and Commerce Committee's jurisdiction is by making deep, harmful cuts to Americans' healthcare," said Pallone. "Republicans know their spin is a lie, and the truth is they have no problem taking healthcare away from millions of Americans so that the rich can get richer and pay less in taxes than they already do."
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President Trump's War on the Poor
The economy continues to generate jobs that won’t support a family. That’s why so-called poverty programs—from CHIP to food stamps to public housing to low income heating assistance to Medicaid—are so necessary.
Dec 10, 2019
Donald Trump is famed for his head-snapping reversals. One day he's taking troops out of the Middle East; the next he's sending more in. One day he's on the verge of an agreement with China on trade; the next he's tweeting about holding off until after the election.
On one thing, however, Trump and his administration have been clear, consistent, coordinated and relentless: waging a war on the poor. Not a war on poverty but a war on the most vulnerable themselves.
Despite low unemployment, millions of Americans--the Brookings Institution estimates an astounding 44% of all workers in the prime working ages of 18-64--struggle to get by on median wages of little over $10 an hour or $18,000 a year. The working poor face soaring costs of housing, health care, transportation, utilities and, of course, debt--all rising faster than their wages.
The official "poverty rate" is far lower than any accounting of the true needs of a family. The National Center for Children in Poverty estimates that the average family needs about twice as much income as the poverty level to meet basic needs.
Cruelly, the Trump response to this is to make it worse. The administration and Republicans in Congress oppose raising the minimum wage and won't even allow a vote on it in the Senate. Now the administration proposes lowering the poverty line over time by pegging the inflation adjustments lower than the actual increase in costs. All programs that help low-wage workers would be affected. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that 250,000 seniors would get less help in purchasing prescription drugs, 300,000 children would lose health care under the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This rule combined with others that the administration has imposed will cost literally millions of low-wage workers to face cutbacks in food assistance.
Student loan debt is now $1.5 trillion, primarily loans taken out by the children of middle- or low-income families trying to better themselves through education. Bernie Sanders, running for president, has pledged to eliminate all student debt, paying for it with taxes on the wealthy, and to make all public colleges tuition free. Elizabeth Warren has joined in a plan to eliminate the debt for most students and make colleges tuition free.
Trump is reportedly worried that these plans are very popular. His administration is scrambling to respond. One proposal, as the Washington Post reported, is to cap the loans a student could get in relation to their projected income. That's right, the Trump plan may call for reducing student debt by cutting the availability of loans to students--effectively closing the doors to college to the children of middle- and low-income families.
Add to this Trump's most recent plan to take $2 billion out of the Pell Grant program--which supports college grants to children from families with less than $50,000 in income--to pay for sending NASA back to the moon. The maximum Pell Grant once covered nearly 80% of the cost of tuition, fees, room and board at public four-year college; now it covers less than 30%.
This is a program that needs more funding, not less.
Trump, of course, brags on his economy and the low unemployment. He argues--without evidence--that his tax cut is trickling down to workers. What he doesn't realize is that this economy continues to generate jobs that won't support a family. That's why so-called poverty programs--from CHIP to food stamps to public housing to low income heating assistance to Medicaid--are so necessary. They give vital support to low-wage workers who do some of the hardest, most taxing jobs in our country.
Cuts in student aid, cuts in Pell grants, cuts in food stamps, cuts in the poverty level--Trump is putting low wage workers and their families in a box with no way out except down. Our country is paying a very high price for this meanness.
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Thanks to Trump, 4 Million US Children Are Uninsured as Coverage Declines for Second Year in a Row
Children lost healthcare coverage as Trump delayed CHIP funding, slashed ACA outreach resources, and attacked immigrant families' access to government programs.
Oct 30, 2019
President Donald Trump's administration has succeeded in gutting the the Affordable Care Act and attacking access to healthcare coverage for low-income families--causing the number of uninsured children in the U.S. to climb to more than four million, a study released Tuesday finds.
The Georgetown University Center study found 400,000 children lost their health coverage between 2016 and 2018, making this year the second in a row to see the number of uninsured children rise.
There are now more uninsured children in the U.S. since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2014. The Georgetown researchers described the increase as part of "a very troubling trend."
"This is another reason we need Medicare for All--the wealthiest country in the history of the world and our healthcare system can't cover children."
--Ted Terry, mayor of Clarkston, Ga.
"The decline in health coverage occurred at a time when children should have been gaining coverage in the private market and is a red flag for policymakers as even more children would likely lose coverage in an economic downturn," said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center.
Alker blamed the decline on "the Trump administration's actions or inactions that have made health coverage harder to access," including the shortening of the ACA enrollment period; fewer resources given to ACA outreach efforts; a delay in implementing CHIP, which covers families that don't have employer-based insurance and don't qualify for Medicaid; and Trump's "public charge" rule, which experts say has deterred immigrant families for applying for government programs.
The uninsured rate among children dropped sharply after the ACA, also known as Obamacare, went into effect. In 2015, four million children had no health coverage, compared with nearly five million in 2014. Georgetown's study reveals that many of the gains made under the Obama administration have been erased by Trump.
Low- to middle-income families have been hit hardest by the decline in health coverage, and the majority of uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but are not enrolled.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alexander Azar on Tuesday, demanding records regarding the health coverage decline and slamming the Trump administration for claiming, as Medicaid administrator Seema Verma has, that the trend is due to low unemployment rates and reduced reliance on government-funded programs.
"This is a disturbing trend that the administration should be looking to correct, but instead, your administration has applauded the enrollment declines among children," wrote Wyden and Pallone. "And while you assert that they are the result of an improving economy, that is simply not borne out by the evidence."
"If children were leaving Medicaid and CHIP and finding coverage elsewhere, then the number and percent of uninsured children would go down," they added.
Ted Terry, the progressive mayor of Clarkston, Georgia, who is running for a Senate seat in 2020, tweeted that Georgetown's study offers "another reason we need Medicare for All."
\u201cICYMI: #GA ranked 5th for highest number of uninsured children. \n\nThis is another reason we need #MedicareForAll - the wealthiest country in the history of the world & our health care system can\u2019t cover children. Children. This election is about the moral character of our nation.\u201d— Ted Terry \u262e\ufe0f (@Ted Terry \u262e\ufe0f) 1572438368
"The wealthiest country in the history of the world and our healthcare system can't cover children," Terry wrote. "This election is about the moral character of our nation."
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