GOP Sen. Josh Hawley Warns Against 'Massive' Medicaid Cuts: 'I Don't Like The Idea'

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Source: Huff Post

Feb 19, 2025, 06:00 AM EST | Updated 6 hours ago


WASHINGTON ― Republicans in the House are considering big cuts to Medicaid — and that isn’t sitting well with one Republican senator, who’s arguing they’d harm many people who voted for President Donald Trump. “I would not do severe cuts to Medicaid,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told HuffPost in an interview on Tuesday.

He said he agreed with MAGA whisperer Steve Bannon, who warned over the weekend that the right “can’t just take a meat axe” to the program because it also benefits low-income Trump supporters.

Hawley’s objection to carving up Medicaid will be yet another complication for Republicans as they seek to enact Trump’s legislative agenda and extend his 2017 tax cuts. In the House, GOP lawmakers are eyeing massive spending reductions to offset some of the cost of the tax cuts, which they have pegged at $4.5 trillion over 10 years. They’ve signaled these savings measures will include cuts to Medicaid, which pays medical bills for about 72 million low-income Americans, including millions of children.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing forward with their own slimmer budget plan that would first boost border security, defense and energy policy, and want to tackle passing tax cuts later on. The two chambers still aren’t any closer to uniting around a singular strategy. Hawley said his fellow Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has “a tough, tough road ahead of him” coming up with nearly $900 billion in spending cuts to help offset the cost of the tax reductions. “I don’t like the idea of massive Medicaid cuts. We should have no Medicare cuts of any kind,” the senator added.

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/medicaid-cuts-josh-hawley_n_67b53047e4b04083cc99456a