On Tuesday night time, Donald Trump instructed Fox Information’ Sean Hannity that Medicaid could be preserved underneath a brand new GOP spending plan. “None of that stuff goes to be touched,” the president said in a joint interview with “effectivity” czar Elon Musk. However the very subsequent day, Trump endorsed a Home price range invoice that would not simply contact the federal government program—it could take a chainsaw to it, threatening the healthcare of hundreds of thousands of People to subsidize the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts the president has sought.
“It would, with out query, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote of the “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” the decrease chamber has put forth, stunning not solely a few of his personal employees with the endorsement however the Senate Republicans who had been engaged on their very own authorities funding plan.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Senate Majority Chief John Thune said after Trump’s Reality Social announcement Wednesday.
It’s exhausting to see why Thune could be shocked, although. Does he not know who his social gathering’s chief is? Trump consistently lies and says no matter he must with a purpose to get from one second to the following, as seen in his since-walked-back promise to carry costs down for People on his first day in workplace. However past that, he virtually at all times acts on impulse, saying or doing issues after which figuring it out as he goes alongside—or clumsily course-correcting afterward, as seen in his administration’s slapdash efforts to rehire a few of the crucial company staffers who had been caught up in Musk’s mass firing spree or to soften the president’s proposal to “take over” Gaza in violation of worldwide legislation. Given all that, did any Senate Republicans truly suppose he’d be a gradual hand guiding the 2 chambers to a reconciliation invoice—or that he would maintain to his vow to not endanger Medicaid and different social security web packages, that are each broadly in style and relied upon by a lot of GOP voters?
Apparently so. Senator Josh Hawley told Politico he had “considerations” concerning the “Home’s proposal for very deep cuts to Medicaid.” These considerations have been shared, evidently, by Iowa’s Chuck Grassley: “Entitlements are tough to take care of,” he instructed the outlet.
It’s not clear precisely the place issues will go from right here. Although Trump backed the Home invoice, with its $880 billion in Medicaid cuts, the White Home has despatched combined alerts, with a spokesman telling Politico that the administration was dedicated to defending this system whereas “slashing the waste, fraud, and abuse” in it and Medicare. The Senate, in the meantime, seems to be urgent forward with its personal price range invoice, with Vice President JD Vance’s blessing: The higher chamber might have been caught flat-footed by Trump’s announcement, however now it has its “foot on the fuel, shifting ahead,” Majority Whip John Barrasso told ABC Information.
Caught in the course of all this? The more than 70 million Americans who depend upon Medicaid and will turn into collateral injury in Trump’s effort to make good on the one of many few guarantees he truly plans on preserving: “We’re gonna provide you with tax cuts,” Trump instructed his “wealthy as hell” friends at Mar-a-Lago throughout his 2024 run.
