Senate GOP talks cutting Medicare ‘waste, fraud’ to offset cost of Trump tax bill
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Senate Republicans on Wednesday discussed the need to cut out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare to achieve more deficit reduction in President Trump’s landmark bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts, provide new tax relief, secure the border and boost defense spending.
The House-passed bill would cut more than $800 billion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, but some GOP lawmakers argue that other mandatory spending programs, such as Medicare, should also be reviewed for “waste” to further reduce the cost of the bill.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told reporters after the meeting that there is “a legitimate debate” within the Senate Republican conference about whether bigger cuts can be made to federal Medicaid spending and whether federal Medicare spending needs to be reviewed as well.
“There’s a legitimate debate about, ‘Can we do more with Medicaid? Are we doing too much with Medicaid? How much waste, fraud and abuse is there in Medicare? Why don’t we go after that?’ I think we should,” Cramer said after meeting with colleagues to discuss changes to the House-passed bill to enact Trump’s agenda.
“Some people are afraid of the topics. I’m not,” Cramer said. “In my view, this is our moment as Republicans in control of all three branches and we ought to be going after more fiscal responsibility.”
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“Some people are making that case, other people are wringing their hands,” Cramer said of the debate in the GOP conference.
Senate conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) say they will vote against the bill because it will add trillions of dollars to the national debt. They are pushing for bigger deficit-reduction measures.
“There was a lot of presentation and then debate, people throwing out other ideas, like, ‘What about waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare?’” he said.
The North Dakota senator said some Republican colleagues also want to do more to crack down on states using health care provider taxes as a budget gimmick to collect more Medicaid funding.
“What can we do about the provider tax, money-laundering scheme by states? What more can we do to bend the cost curve a little bit,” Cramer said of the discussion among GOP senators about how to further reduce how much the bill will add to the debt.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the House-passed bill will add $2.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.
The federal government is expected to run a $2.2 trillion debt in 2025 and that could rise to $2.7 trillion in 2035.
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