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March 06, 2025 10:45 AM UTC

Reminder: Gabe Evans Serves On Committee Set To Slash Medicaid

1 Comments
by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage reported yesterday evening, the Congressional Budget Office has rendered its judgment on the budget resolution narrowly passed by the U.S. House last week–and despite the promise by Republicans from President Donald Trump to Colorado’s most vulnerable Republican Rep. Gabe Evans to protect funding for bedrock social safety nets like Medicare and Medicaid, massive cuts to these institutions relied upon by tens of thousands of residents of every congressional district in Colorado are the only way to achieve the spending cuts called for in the budget resolution:

Trump has said the GOP shouldn’t cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Those are the three largest social safety net programs, which together accounted for roughly $3.2 trillion of the country’s $6.75 trillion of total spending in the 2024 fiscal year.

More than 60 million Americans rely on each program for medical coverage, retirement security, survivor benefits and unemployment caused by disability. Cutting benefits in any of them could be politically toxic.

But the House GOP’s budget, which passed last week in a hairline vote, asks the committee responsible for federal health-care spending to find at least $880 billion in savings over 10 years. And the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that reducing costs that much won’t be possible without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The House committee responsible for health care policy is the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Colorado has two members of our congressional delegation who serve on this committee: Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver, who is the ranking Democrat on the health subcommittee, and freshman Republican Rep. Gabe Evans. Evans’ appointment to the Energy and Commerce Committee was somewhat of a big deal in January, being the first freshman appointed to the prestigious committee in over a decade.

Soon this plum committee appointment could become an albatross around Gabe Evans’ neck. The disconnect between Trump’s and Evans’ promise to protect Medicaid and the budget resolution they both supported that demands otherwise is rapidly coming to a head, and so far all Evans has had to offer in the debate over Medicaid cuts is deflective anecdotes that total up to a tiny fraction of the looming cuts. One estimate of the loss of Medicaid coverage in Evans’ district along to meet the budget resolution’s target is 43,000 people losing their health coverage, resulting from cuts that would dwarf any of the reality-based estimates of “fraud and waste” to be found.

All four of Colorado’s Republican members of Congress have tens of thousands of constituents about to be similarly affected. But of those four, only Gabe Evans will be in a position to shape the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee that turns the hypothetical cuts prescribed in the budget resolution passed last month into hard reality. Evans’ political vulnerability in one of the nation’s most competitive districts naturally makes him the focus of attention from partisan Democrats, but Evans’ direct role in crafting the expected legislation as a member of this committee makes Evans more than a target of political expediency.

If Republicans get their way, Gabe Evans is going to play an outsized role in doing harm to tens of thousands of his own constituents. On a matter as crucial as access to healthcare, it is not hyperbole to suggest that some of those constituents who lose their coverage will die.

Evans didn’t win his seat by enough to make this an acceptable career risk.

One thought on “Reminder: Gabe Evans Serves On Committee Set To Slash Medicaid”

JohnInDenver says:

March 6, 2025 at 10:30 pm

Saw one analysis that said if the committee zeroed out EVERYTHING else beyond Medicaid, CHIP, and Medicare, they would still be $600 billion short of their instruction to cut $8800 billion over the next 10 years.

I'm not certain that even the Republicans in the cult wll be able to gather majorities for bills that would diminish coverage as much as needed.

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Reminder: Gabe Evans Serves On Committee Set To Slash Medicaid

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One thought on “Reminder: Gabe Evans Serves On Committee Set To Slash Medicaid”

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