June 06, 2025 01:10 PM UTC

Senate Republicans Consider Politically Suicidal Medicare Cuts

• 5 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As NBC News reports, negotiations over the “We’re All Going To Die Act” among Republicans in the U.S. Senate have apparently taken a turn towards what was at the beginning of the budget negotiation process under President Donald Trump assured by all including Trump to be “off the table”–cuts to Medicare, the extremely popular health coverage program for older Americans, which is distinct from Medicaid, the state-run insurance programs for low-income and chronically ill Americans of all ages already slashed by hundreds of billions in the budget reconciliation package passed by the House:

Looking at new ways to pay for their sprawling bill for President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, Republicans are exploring ideas to slash “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicare, several senators said Thursday…

The discussions open up a policy debate that could have explosive political ramifications. Medicare is a highly popular program that provides health insurance to people over 65 years old, and Democrats are already launching attacks on the new GOP discussions about making changes to the program.

“A program that 66 million Americans rely on is not waste, fraud, or abuse — it’s lifesaving for the constituents of Republicans pushing to gut Medicare,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement Thursday. “Let’s be crystal clear: Donald Trump gave Republicans the green light to gut access to lifesaving medication and rip away health insurance to fund tax handouts for billionaires. These dangerous attacks are as disgraceful as they are unpopular — and will cost Republicans their seats come the midterms.”

The cover story from Senate Republicans is that President Trump has endorsed their effort to squeeze savings out of Medicare despite Trump’s promises that the program wouldn’t be touched, claiming now that Trump’s blanket promises to protect Medicare, often delivered testily out of feigned surprise that anyone didn’t believe his previous answers, never applied to the “waste and abuse” they expect to absorb the proposed cutting:

“The president has been clear — no cuts to Medicare, Social Security, or Medicaid. This bill addresses waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending,” [White House spokesman Kush] Desai said in an email.

It’s a fictional distinction that according to polls the American public does not buy in the case of the Medicaid cuts in the House budget bill, and the prospect of the same kind of procedural hurdles engineered to lose eligible patients in the shuffle that Republicans have in mind for Medicaid in the name of ferreting out “waste and abuse” targeting Medicare beneficiaries is going to surprise and alarm millions of Americans who believed Trump’s promises that Medicare “would not be touched” at face value. This wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal.

And it’s more uncertainty added to this already precarious exercise, trying to cobble together a majority from Republicans concerned about the bill for polar opposite reasons. Adding once-unthinkable cuts to Medicare into this already volatile mix could be enough to sink the whole thing. Politically, by breaking the trust of voters of all persuasions in even considering cuts to this once-inviolate bedrock social safety net in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, Republicans are setting themselves up for even greater retribution from voters in the fast-approaching midterms.

Then again, it’s exactly what ex-Rep. Greg Lopez told us was coming. Lopez’s spilling of the beans after his brief stint in Washington has proven prophetic.