Republicans cannot achieve their own budgetary objective without cutting Medicare or Medicaid, says the Budget Office

Washington – Républicains de la Chambre cannot achieve their own budgetary objective which is necessary to adopt the legislative program of President Donald Trump without making significant discounts in Medicare or Medicaid, confirmed the official budget goalkeeper on Wednesday.

The House Republicans adopted a budgetary plan last week which opens the door to adopt Trump’s political priorities on immigration, energy and taxes. He ordered the Chamber’s energy and trade committee to reduce expenses under his jurisdiction by $ 880 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office, an internal non -partisan reflection group that arbitrates the process, said that when Medicare is canceled, total funding under the court jurisdiction is 8.8 billions of dollars over 10 years. Medicaid represents 8.2 billions of dollars, or 93%.

When Medicare and Medicaid are excluded, the Committee oversees a total of $ 581 billion in spending – much less than the target of $ 880 billion – said the CBO. The letter describing the figures was in response to a question of the representatives of Frank Pallone, DN.J., classification member of the Energy and Trade Committee, and Brendan Boyle, D-PA. the classification member of the Budget Committee.

This leaves the Republicans in a deep situation. The budgetary resolution, adopted by the thinnest margins of the closely divided house, was the delicate product of negotiations between the conservative ages which require high spending reductions and the GOP legislators of the swing district which say that they do not want to reduce funding for the health programs on which their voters are based.

The revision of the objective would mean upsetting one of these factions and potentially risking the support of key votes to adopt the possible budget reconciliation bill that advances Trump’s agenda.

The Democrats made the protection of Medicaid a centerpiece of their attack on the party’s GOP agenda, accusing Trump of having tried to reduce health care for the working class to pay the tax reductions for the rich. The representative Al Green, D-Texas, was escorted outside the room of the room during Trump’s speech at the congress on Tuesday evening after interrupting several times and shouted: “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

“This CBO letter confirms what we have said from the start: mathematics do not work without devastating Medicaid cuts,” Pallone said in a statement on Wednesday. “Republicans know that their rotation is a lie, and the truth is that they have no problem keeping millions of Americans away so that the rich can become richer and pay less tax than they already do.”

Trump recently said in an interview with Fox News: “Medicare, Medicaid – None of this will be affected.”

Medicare provides health care to the elderly. Medicaid extends the coverage of health care to low -income and disabled people.

But the republicans of the house disagree with Trump and put Medicaid on the blocking. President Mike Johnson, R-La., said MEDICAIDE was on the table for reinstated expenses.

“Medicaid is extremely problematic because it has a lot of fraud, waste and abuse,” Johnson told journalists last week. “I think it’s $ 50 billion a year of Medicaid fraud. These are precious dollars of taxpayers. Everyone is committed to preserving the advantages of health insurance for those who desperately need it and deserve it and qualify for it. What we are talking about is eliminating fraud, waste and abuse. »»

Invited to safeguard this figure, Johnson’s office cited a statistics from the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that the “incorrect payment rate” under Medicaid is $ 50.3 billion. But the report clearly indicated that errors were not mainly fraud products.

“On the incorrect payments of Medicaid 2023, 82% are the result of insufficient documentation”, wrote CMS in the 2023 report. “These payments generally involve situations where a state or supplier has missed an administrative step and does not necessarily indicate fraud or abuse.”

Trump did not mention Medicaid during his speech to a joint session of the congress on Tuesday.