House speaker proud of budget that rips away health care for millions

House Republicans on Thursday plan to advance their budget proposal that would decimate Medicaid and slash food stamp benefits all to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans.

“I expect it to pass—unanimously,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday of the GOP budget, which is having a hearing in the House Budget Committee.

The budget blueprint, which Republicans released on Wednesday, calls for $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and $230 billion in cuts to food stamps over a 10-year period.

Republicans say instituting work requirements for Medicaid—which would almost certainly lead working people to lose Medicaid coverage simply because they are unable to navigate the burdensome bureaucratic process to prove they are working—would automatically lead to cost savings.

But experts say Medicaid work requirements would barely make a dent in the $880 billion Republicans want to cut from Medicaid.

Instead, Larry Leavitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said Republicans would likely cut the Medicaid expansion funding created by the Affordable Care Act, which would cause 20 million people to lose health insurance.

Ultimately, the cuts Republicans proposed would only partially pay for the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts President Donald Trump wants, which will overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans.

The rest of the funding would come from Republicans’ fanciful belief that economic growth will lead to trillions more in revenue.

“Although tax cuts are likely to boost economic output and generate some revenue as a result, this $3 trillion feedback assumption is an order of magnitude larger than any semi-credible estimates and would require fantastical levels of sustained economic growth,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Government said in a report.

Indeed, two GOP budget hawk lawmakers on the Budget Committee, Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who initially were not committed to supporting the budget because they do not believe the spending cuts go deep enough, now both seem to be onboard.

As for the cuts the Republican budget will force, they could be politically devastating to the GOP.

The last time Republicans tried to strip health care away from millions of people was in 2017, and it led to a midterm drubbing for Trump and his party.

“While there’s not going to be an [Affordable Care Act] repeal debate, or it at least won’t be called that, these federal health spending reductions could approach or even exceed what Republicans attempted in the 2017 repeal effort," Levitt told HuffPost.

Polling shows that Medicaid is popular. A January survey from the Democratic firm Hart Research found that 76% of voters have a favorable view of Medicaid, and an almost identical 78% disapprove of Medicaid cuts.

The poll also found that 82% of voters disapprove of making cuts to health care programs in order to pay for tax cuts, which is exactly what Republicans are trying to do.

“This morning, House Republicans are trying to give $4.5 TRILLION in tax giveaways to the ultra-rich,” Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said on Thursday. “It's a betrayal of the middle class—and Democrats are ready to fight back.”