The Patriot Post® · Johnson Hits Back Hard at Dems' Medicaid, Social Security Fearmongering
Running on empty — and hounded by unpopularity — Democrats have latched onto the hysteria over Medicaid and Social Security cuts like a lifeline in a political hurricane. Of course, stoking panic over Americans’ benefits is something the Left has done effectively for decades, but now, with Donald Trump bulldozing billions of dollars in government programs, they see a unique opportunity to make the fear stick — whether or not there’s any truth to their claims.
Like so much of the Democrats’ messaging, the idea that Republicans want to strip away grandma’s health care is built on a house of lies. It ignores the very inconvenient fact that our entitlement programs have ballooned well beyond their original purpose and are saddled with billions upon billions of dollars in duplication, fraud, waste, and abuse (taxpayer-fundedsex changes, anyone?). And that, not legal citizens’ hard-earned health care and retirement dollars, is what the GOP is targeting.
The Left’s campaign is such a fabrication that Republicans have successfully forced Democrats to take down billboards in six districts where they threatened defamation lawsuits. “This proves our argument that Democrats are lying in their Medicaid messaging, and will make it much more challenging for them to make those arguments going forward,” said Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
What most people don’t realize is that there’s been a massive expansion of Medicaid since COVID. “In the last five years, federal Medicaid spending has skyrocketed from $409 billion in 2019 to $618 billion in 2024,” House Freedom Caucus members warn in a new op-ed, “a 51% increase. Despite being 60 years old, a third of Medicaid’s growth has occurred in those same five years. And in the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicaid will cost more than $1 trillion annually, rivaling the size of Saudi Arabia’s current economy.”
Apart from the 1.3 million illegal immigrants now taking advantage of the program that hard-working Americans pay for, our country desperately needs to reform who’s eligible to receive Medicaid. The reality, as the Freedom Caucus members pointed out, is that Medicaid “was intended to assist vulnerable populations like the disabled, pregnant women, children and people in poverty. Today, able-bodied, working-capable adults are on course to become the largest subgroup on Medicaid.”
As a result, “the ‘safety net’ has become a full-blown poverty trap, keeping Americans in an endless cycle of dependency and diverting resources from those who truly need help. In some states, higher provider rates for expansion enrollees have created an explicit financial incentive for healthcare providers to discriminate against traditional enrollees. Single moms, infants and the disabled are being pushed aside in favor of able-bodied adults without dependents.”
For Medicaid to be financially solvent again, that has to end, Family Research Council’s Quena González explained to The Washington Stand. “There are states where there are estimates that 40% of households are on Medicaid in some ways. This is insane. We cannot continue like that.”
In some regions, The Daily Caller detailed, Biden also “encouraged states to propose waivers to broaden Medicaid coverage during his presidency, resulting in the CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] approving some states’ requests to use Medicaid funds to pay for non-medical expenses for some individuals, such as rent, air conditioning and food.” By April of last year, the federal government was even green-lighting plans from Massachusetts “to use Medicaid funds to pay for up to six months of temporary housing for eligible families and pregnant individuals who are MassHealth members residing in the emergency shelter system.”
As González put it, Republicans have a choice between reforming Medicaid — bringing it back in line with stricter, pre-COVID objectives — or balancing the budget and paying for the president’s agenda. As Donald Trump has stated repeatedly, Medicaid wouldn’t be touched beyond the abuse, fraud, and misguided spending that mushroomed under Biden. And congressional Republicans have been just as transparent, even offering up a public list of possible cuts to Medicaid funding that could save up to $35 billion in the next 10 years.
But in plain defiance of those facts, Democrats — and even some moderate Republicans — are spooking voters with outright lies about what the GOP’s targets actually are. Twelve members of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) moderate wing threatened to pull their support from the budget reconciliation package if he included “any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” “Balancing the federal budget,” they reiterated, “must not come at the expense of … [constituents’] health and economic security.”
Their Freedom Caucus colleagues fired back, “We are not asking you to slash Medicaid, only turn back the clock and reverse its explosive expansion in the last few years that has put it on an unsustainable course. We have a duty to safeguard taxpayers and ensure that Medicaid does not bankrupt us. Cut the waste. Cut the fraud. Cut the abuse.”
And if lawmakers “are hesitant to make these changes,” they point out, “many of these measures can still be phased in — saving taxpayers hundreds of billions without cutting anyone’s benefits. Not to mention the additional hundreds of billions that could be saved by cracking down on improper payments, which have reached a rate of over 25% in recent audits. … Medicaid reforms,” they repeated, “are not the end of entitlement programs. They are a necessary step toward real solutions to address our nation’s debt crisis and secure the financial future of generations to come.”
Johnson, who’s been dogged by this misinformation campaign, doesn’t know how else he can say it. “We have been very clear over and over and over,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “And yet that has not stopped the Democrats from … just lying about it.”
And it’s easy to see why, he pointed out. “They really don’t have anything to run on. As we’ve discussed many times, they don’t have an identified leader of the party. They don’t have a vision they can articulate. They don’t have a platform. So the entire Democratic playbook is a list of two [strategies]: attack Trump and his administration and attack House Republicans and lie about what we’re doing for the people. And that’s what this is, plain and simple.”
In states where the Left is filling ad space with these deceptions, the GOP will continue to involve the lawyers. “That’s why the attorneys do cease and desist. Letters had to be abided by immediately, and they pulled these billboards down. And we’ve proven once again now in six battleground districts around the country that they’re just simply not telling the truth.”
What is true, Perkins reiterated, is the reality of Biden’s massive $700 billion expansion of Medicaid for everyone from illegal immigrants to able-bodied, working-age adults. “The problem is,” the speaker replied, “the resources in those programs are being drained unnecessarily and unlawfully, because you have people who are not eligible to receive them actually draining those month by month. … It’s a safety net,” but there will be no net, he warned, if you have “other persons draining the resources.” Eliminate that fraud, waste, and abuse, Johnson stressed, and “you save hundreds of billions of dollars.”
So what was behind Biden’s decision to open the program up to millions of people who weren’t eligible, Perkins wondered? Johnson could only shake his head. “We are always at a lack of ability to explain the Biden administration’s thought processes. I mean, it looks sinister.” The real goal, he believes, is to push the country into a single-payer system where the government controls everyone’s health care and the health care system. “And this was, I guess, theoretically, one of the means to do that. If you push everyone onto state and federal assistance for health care, ultimately, the system will implode upon itself. And we have to stop that. We’re not a socialist communist country. And these programs are essential. And if we do the reforms that are necessary, we will save them.”
As difficult as it is to break through the biases of the legacy media, Johnson insists the GOP will keep fighting to be heard. “Some people would say, ‘Well, you’re taking a political risk.’ [But] we’re going to do the right thing. I mean, we know that they’re going to lie. We know they’re going to misrepresent this. We know they’re going to try to use it in the upcoming election cycle,” he acknowledged. “But the difference between Republicans and Democrats right now in Congress is that we are going to do the right thing for the people. And I think at the end of the day, they will recognize that, and I think they’ll reward it.”
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.