March 6, 2025
There must be cuts to Medicaid. Unless Republicans want to balloon the federal debt — there’s no other way to achieve President Trump’s massive tax cuts — cut federal spending by trillions of dollars — and push billions of dollars in new spending on border security, mass deportation and defense. That’s the verdict from the congressional budget office. And this new report completely contradicts everything president trump and house republican leadership has been saying and promising for weeks.
Remember I told you in several videos last week that House Republicans passed a spending blueprint – called a budget resolution. This is the vehicle House Republicans want to use to enact President Trump’s sweeping agenda without a single democratic vote. As I told you in this video – the budget resolution just gives top line dollar amounts that individual House committees need to follow when they craft their individual spending bills. The budget resolution does not tell the committees where to make those cuts.
Overall, the budget resolution that passed in the House with only Republican votes called for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, between $1.5 and $2 trillion dollars in federal spending cuts and a $4 trillion increase to the debt ceiling. But what had everyone concerned– within that $2 trillion in spending cuts — was the order to the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion out of its budget over the next 10 years. That committee oversees several government departments and programs including consumer protection agencies, commerce, business, food and drug safety, air quality and environmental issues. But this committee also oversees health care spending – including programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
While it’s a fact that the budget resolution does not say the Energy and Commerce committee must cut $880 billion from Medicare or Medicaid –if you just look at the raw numbers it would be hard to see how that committee could achieve $880 billion in spending cuts without cutting some or most of those programs. But President Trump and Speaker Johnson and lots of Republicans have been all over the media saying over and over that they are absolutely not going to touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid to achieve their goals outlined in the budget resolution. They said anyone who said otherwise was making things up.
Well this report from the Congressional Budget Office just released says if House Republicans want those Trump tax cuts and they want those spending cuts and they absolutely won’t touch Medicare – to reach that $880 billion– some or lots of Medicaid funding must be cut. There’s no other way to reach $880 billion in cuts. The CBO says once the Medicare spending is taken off the table Medicaid accounts for 93% of the spending the House Energy and Commerce committee is responsible for. The next biggest program after that is CHIP which is the Children’s Health Insurance Program for low income kids. Could that be on the chopping block?
Now – congressional lawmakers have a love-hate relationship with the CBO. When the CBO’s numbers go their way they say the CBO is the greatest non-partisan government agency ever but when the CBO’s number don’t go their way lawmakers pretend like the CBO doesn’t exist or they say the CBO is full of crap. And the fact is the CBO doesn’t always get it right. Remember they’re projecting numbers 10 years into the future here but they have been used for decades to help lawmakers decide what their legislation is really going to cost the American people.
Look – we have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. This house republican budget resolution isn’t the end of the story. Both the House and the Senate must agree to and pass the same budget resolution before any spending bills can be crafted. And right now Senate Republicans have not signed on to this House resolution they have their own which is very different. The Senate Republican version is much smaller, it does not include those massive Trump tax cuts and it does not include the debt ceiling increase. By the way senators are generally not fans of cutting Medicaid. So just because this is what the house wants doesn’t mean this is what is going to happen in the end.
Read the CBO report here.
