Senate Republican accidentally admits GOP is coming for Medicare
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana slipped up on Monday, admitting that congressional Republicans are coming for Medicare.
In an appearance on CNBC, Cassidy said congressional Republicans will look at cutting not just discretionary spending in the budget—to partially pay for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich—but also mandatory spending like Medicare, the overwhelmingly popular and critical program that provides health care to more than 68 million older Americans.
“Let’s look at Medicare: Is there some way we can cut Medicare so that, excuse me, reform Medicare so that benefits stay the same but that it’s less expensive, more efficient?” Cassidy said. “I would say that there is, and that’s where our opportunity lies.”
Cassidy’s comments give away the game that when Republicans say they want to “reform” programs, they really mean cut them.
“It’s kind of amazing when their consciences fight through to tell the truth of what they will do,” Neera Tanden, the president and CEO of the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote in a post on X.
To pay for tax cuts for the rich, Republicans are proposing a budget plan that calls for hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps—two popular programs that help low-income Americans survive.
As opposition to that idea grew, Republicans lied and said that Medicaid wouldn’t be touched.
But Cassidy is now saying that Republicans will look at cutting Medicare, a program so popular that politicians almost always refuse to touch it for fear of the major backlash that would ensue from voters.
A Navigator Research poll released Monday found 70% of Americans oppose cuts to Medicare—a number rarely seen in the polarized political climate we live in.
Democrats immediately drew attention to Cassidy’s comments as proof that Republicans have been lying about not cutting government health care programs.
“A GOP Senator—who chairs a committee that oversees much of our nation’s health care—just said the quiet part out loud and confirmed what Democrats have been fighting so hard to stop: The Republicans’ reckless budget resolution would gut essential health care for millions—all to hand even more tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York wrote in a post on X.
“Freudian slip. Freudian slip. Freudian slip,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, said in response to Cassidy’s accidental admission, a sentiment echoed by Sen. Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, who tweeted: “Ope, a little Freudian slip?”