Far-right Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) vehemently opposes a key component of President Donald Trump and the House GOP's budget proposal and has introduced legislation to prevent it from coming to pass.
"Hawley says he filed an amendment barring cuts to Medicaid," reported Igor Bobic of the Huffington Post. "Adds he’s tempted to vote for similar Dem amendments."
Hawley has already spoken out in opposition to the idea of cuts to Medicaid, the massive federal-state partnership that provides public health insurance to lower-income Americans and currently covers around 80 million people, including the Children's Health Insurance Program. It echoes the position of far-right former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who has noted that Medicaid now covers millions of Trump supporters who would then be facing ruin.
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The House GOP's budget proposal, which creates the framework to pay for Trump's proposed tax cuts, includes around $1 trillion in combined cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, also known as the food stamp program.
Trump vowed this week that he wouldn't touch Medicaid, similar to his pledges not to cut Social Security or Medicare — but then almost immediately turned around and endorsed the House's budget blueprint even though it calls for those cuts. The contradiction has left his staffers scrambling to figure out what the president's position actually is.
When Trump was last in office, the GOP sought to make hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicaid through their unsuccessful bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Even after that failed, Trump went on to cut the program by allowing states to test out draconian work requirements that threw thousands of people off their coverage, even those who nominally met the requirements. Federal courts went on to block most of these programs, and the Biden administration then rescinded authorization for them.