Trump Pushes Cuts to Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Food for Poor Kids
Seventy-one percent of Trump voters oppose the cuts he just pushed for
Feb. 26: House passes bill with guidance to cut health and food aid for poor people … GOP leaders made conflicting vows to win votes … Trump voters hate the new bill … Trump to literally sell U.S. residency to rich people …
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In a dramatic vote last night, House Republicans first gave up for the night and then scrambled to get everyone back onto the hill to pass (with a margin of just one vote) a budget package that House moderates and extremists were opposing just hours before, is how most corporate media are reporting this today instead of like this:
Thanks to Pres. Donald Trump, House Republicans last night passed a bill with:
Cuts to hospitals
Cuts to community health centers
Cuts to nursing homes
Cuts to personal-care services
Cuts to food for poor families and kids
One company’s guidance for investors warned that “We believe hospitals, nursing home services and personal care services providers would be the most affected by the proposed Medicaid cuts,” Skilled Nursing News reported.
Twenty percent of the country is on Medicaid. That includes 40% of the precious, precious children we’re protecting by taking their health care for real sicknesses to pay soldiers to fight fictional enemies on the border and fund tax cuts for billionaires who will invest their windfalls in AI and robots to eliminate future jobs for any surviving, precious, precious children.
The bill that passed last night has the broad contours of spending cuts. Now come the specifics. However, some of those contour numbers are so big that the specifics will have to include the kinds of stuff just listed.
Also on the chopping block is the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid, which most of today’s political coverage isn’t mentioning, so TFN will share what KFF1 had to say. They didn’t put it quite this way, because KFF ≠ TFN, but the Medicaid cuts will fuck Medicaid recipients even beyond the lost federal dollars.
That’s because much of the cuts will likely come from un-expanding Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. Basically, Obamacare enabled states to cover an additional 20 million people — by offering a 90% federal match for every dollar that states spent.
See the problem? For every 90 cents House Republicans cut from Medicaid expansion, states may well cut another dollar. When you crunch the numbers, they = fuck you 20 million people.
It could mean cutting Medicaid rolls virtually in half in some states. These states:
Reportedly, ten states already have laws on the books that mandate killing the state Medicaid funding if the federal matching funds go away.
Just last week, Trump told the credulous hostages who watch Fox that “Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched.” And yet, when you’re a star, they let you do it!
(Never mind that Trump’s budget proposals all four years of his first term included cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid recipients.)
According to the American Journal of Managed Care, Medicaid cuts “would primarily affect those in rural areas and those living below the poverty line.” More from AJMC:
“According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 37% of Medicare spending and 32% of Medicaid spending in 2023 was for hospital care. Reducing that number for Medicaid spending could affect staffing and the services being offered at hospitals, decreasing both quality of care and health care coverage for those working in hospitals and nursing homes. With hospital closings already outpacing hospital openings, the reduction in funding could have far-reaching consequences on hospitals with low funding or in areas that serve fewer patients.”
All of these cuts, of course, are to fund just part of the bill’s up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, weighted heavily toward the handful of people who make enough money to tax.
(The bill mandates that the tax cuts will shrink if the spending cuts shrink, making the connection about as explicit as it could get. And giving the rich very direct incentive to buy up the votes needed to funnel money from sick people and hungry kids into the Sauron hordes of America’s oligarchs.)
The only Republican who voted against the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), did so because it doesn’t cut enough. Even the $2 trillion in spending cuts won’t cover the costs of Trump’s tax cuts.
So Massie wrote, "If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better."
“That sounds bad,” responded one genius named Elon Musk.
THE MEDICAID LIES Here’s what to know about the lies they’re telling today. They’ll tell you the $880 billion doesn’t have to come from Medicaid. Which, technically true, but also bullshit because it does have to come from areas in one committee’s purview, and that committee has jurisdiction over virtually nowhere else where they can make cuts.
Here’s what to know about the lies they’ll keep telling tomorrow. The “moderate” Republicans who got on board reportedly said they got assurances that Medicaid beneficiaries won’t be hurt. That’s a super easy promise to make when you’re prepared to reclassify millions of people from the category of “beneficiaries” to the category of “fraud and abuse.”
That’s what’ll happen here. They won’t cut Medicaid “benefits,” they’ll “find” “waste” and “fraud” and “abuse” and smear millions of people in the process to justify depriving them of health care.
We already know this has to happen because, as Politico reported, the Government Accountability Office last year estimated about $31 billion in “improper” Medicaid payments. That means Republicans will have to invent roughly $850 billion in additional “waste, fraud, and abuse” by poor Americans trying to steal health care for themselves and their kids.
NO, I DIDN’T FORGET THE FOOD PART The committee with Medicare/Medicaid oversight isn’t the only one with marching orders from last night’s budget bill. The Agriculture Committee has to cut $230 billion.
That means fucking farmers, obviously, but also fucking the poor kids who eat the food of the fucking farmers.
And the amount to be cut is so huge that “work requirements” — aka “paperwork requirements,” adding more bureaucracy to make it harder to qualify for aid — won’t be enough. The Agriculture Committee will have to make actual, no-pretending cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that helps feed 40 million poor people, including one out of five kids.
As the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities reports, the 2021 “increase in SNAP benefits lifted more than 2 million people, including nearly 1 million children, above the poverty line when it went into effect, with the greatest poverty-reducing impact for Black and Hispanic individuals.”
Back you go, folks.
MORE ON THE INEQUITY The 19th reports that Trump last week dissolved a committee that was working on reducing and eliminating systemic barriers that make it harder for some people to access government health-care programs. Specifically, these some people:
Black people, Latino people, Indigenous and Native American people, Asian American and Pacific Islander people, other non-white people, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, poor people, and rural people.
The programs included Medicare (elderly and disabled), Medicaid (low income), Children’s Health Insurance Program (kids in low-income families), and Obamacare marketplaces.
THE POLITICS Y’know, the part that all the corporate media led with!
The reason last night’s vote was so dramatic — I mean, other than condemning millions of Americans to poverty, ill health, and death if it passes — was that Washington media didn’t know ahead of time whether it would pass.
And Washington media not knowing what will happen before it happens is what determines whether stuff is interesting!
The big, beautiful reality of a vote this close — 217 to 215 — is that every single Republican who voted for it can now be held responsible for its passage. Any single Republican could’ve killed it by voting no.
And, because of some procedural bullshit I don’t understand, last night’s vote checked a box that means the Senate version can pass with a simple majority; no filibuster allowed. So, here are the three Republicans who were holdouts yesterday until the last minute when they decided to vote yes:
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN)
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH)
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN)
But who really deserves the credit blame for the bill passing is the guy who got on the phone to get those last votes over the hump: Trump. Here’s CNN’s reporting:
The votes weren’t there around 7:30 p.m., when the speaker moved to scrap plans to hold the vote at all. But then his leadership team — with help from a Trump call to Rep. Victoria Spartz — was able to win over the last holdouts.
Spartz explained that Trump got her to vote for the cuts by making a “personal commitment to save healthcare and make it better for physical and fiscal health for all Americans.” Hilariously addressing what immediately occurred to anyone alive during the past decade, Spartz added, “I trust his word,” at which point her pants caught on fire.
It’s not clear exactly how Trump would make good on his word since he hasn’t even mentioned having an idea of a concept of a plan.
But also hilariously, Spartz’s two fellow holdouts, Burchett and Davidson, caved and voted for the bill because they got assurances that were the exact opposite of the assurances Spartz got: More cuts.
Davidson said he “finally received the assurances I needed that there will be cuts to discretionary spending … and that we will work together to develop a plan for further discretionary spending cuts.”
Burchett said it was Trump who personally promised — y’know, with his word! — more cuts. Trump, Burchett said, “committed to me that he is going to go after the spending in a lot of these big departments.”
So-called “moderate” Republicans said before the vote that they’re committed to protecting federal aid for their low-income constituents that they then voted not to protect.
“I’m still making my point all the way to the end about the need to protect the services that are important to my district,” said Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) yesterday morning. “This is where the real fight actually begins to protect the services that I’ve been fighting for,” he said before voting not to begin the real fight to protect the services that he’s been fighting for.
Democrats, to their credit (hey, if I criticize, which I do, I gotta give credit when it’s due) put out a pretty effective wrap-up of the real-world consequences and the not-real-world politics. And House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called last night’s bill “the largest Medicaid cut in American history."
The Good News
This is the first real test of Pres. Donald Trump’s Civics 101, teaching America what government does.
This is also political suicide.
If Republicans actually pass anything near the cuts they want, they’re doomed next year and we’ll already be on the recurring, Groundhog Day path toward cleaning up their mess again. Before 2026 is over, congressional Democrats and the next president will already be ramping up work on their ambitious Build Back Buttigieg agenda.
A poll commissioned by the group Families Over Billionaires — and presumably conducted without the adorable bias in its name — shows that everybody hates these cuts. Including people who for whatever reason voted for Trump. Forty-seven percent of Trump voters oppose the bill House Republicans passed last night.
71% of Trump voters call Medicaid cuts unacceptable.
60% of Trump voters call cutting food programs unacceptable.
49% of Trump voters think rich people don’t pay enough taxes.
56% of Trump voters think big corporations don’t pay enough taxes.
67% of Trump voters oppose cutting taxes for rich people.
2% of Trump voters said a high priority for them was cutting taxes for, uh, the 2%.
Ukraine Surrenders … to Trump
Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly has agreed to a deal with somehow U.S. Pres. Donald Jesushasitonlybeen37days Trump. Trump doesn’t get everything he wanted — namely, half-a-trillion dollars worth of mineral rights to Ukraine’s untapped natural resources.
And Zelenskyy’s definitely not getting what he wanted — namely, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin meeting Jason Bourne in a dark alley, but also security assurances from Trump.
What Zelenskyy and Trump do seem to have agreed on is some revenue-sharing from Ukraine’s natural resources. And it’s worth noting that this is revenue-sharing the same way individuals engage in revenue-sharing with armed muggers.
The details remain vague, but the New York Times says the U.S. and Ukraine would create a joint fund to monetize Ukraine’s minerals, oil, and gas. Ukraine would contribute some of its profits, and some of the revenues would be reinvested back in Ukraine.
Previous draft deals envisioned private U.S. investment, as well. The upshot, as always, is that Ukraine — just like any other nation — will have its resources plundered by oligarchs: American oligarchs armed with lawyers instead of Russian oligarchs armed with arms.
But it also, to Zelenskyy’s advantage, means that the U.S. now has skin (albeit not literal skin) in the game on the ground in Ukraine. And unless you believe Trump really just does what Putin wants, this will have to give Putin pause about where and how much more Ukrainian territory he tries for.
DID ZELENSKYY PLAY TRUMP? Your accuracy-seeking TFN has certainly given the impression prior to now that Ukraine is sitting on vast deposits of valuable, uh, deposits. But the New York Times’s Dealbook this morning suggests, well, maybe not?
Trump, Dealbook reports, “appears to mistakenly believe that Ukraine has big stores of rare earth minerals.” Bloomberg’s Javier Blas argues that Trump may have gotten this impression when that notion began making the rounds last year after it was first floated…by Ukraine.
America Also for Sale
Pres. Donald Trump yesterday announced a plan to sell permanent U.S. residency to rich people at $5 million a pop.
The plan would also affect existing American citizens by coating them with a noisome, sticky, viscous patina of revulsion.
"We're going to be selling a gold card," Trump said, out-louding the part about “selling,” which is what happens when voters elect business leaders as civic leaders:
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card, they'll be wealthy and they'll be successful, and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.”
Trump appears to have missed the past several decades of economic reality, in which wealthy people become successful by not spending a lot of money, not paying a lot of taxes, and employing not a lot of people.
And just a reminder that the promise of the Statue of Liberty is to welcome the world’s wretched refuse. Not wretched robber barons.
Trump Flushes Out the White House Press Pool
The White House yesterday announced that for the first time, the president will pick who’s in the White House press pool.
This is, of course, a devastating blow to democracy, because since time immemorial, the pool of people who cover the president in person and get to ask him questions directly has been picked by corporate media conglomerates.
Oh noes.
Disclosure: In alternative media, obtaining credentials to cover Democrats in the White House and in Congress was an unbelievably difficult, ongoing, lengthy process. So, your otherwise-compassionate TFN is not especially compassionate toward the corporate-media cliques that successfully kept out “alternative” outlets like TYT and now find themselves in the same bind.
And, frankly, it’s not clear what past access really got us in terms of democracy-saving journalism. I know, I know, journalists argued with presidents. And that accomplished what?
Way too much White House coverage was really just serial entertainment in something very like a soap opera, with questions focused on presidential opinions, predictions, timing of shit, and so on.
Rather than about issues directly affecting the material lives of the people. So, there are lots of reasons to think this might have better outcomes.
White House coverage will be almost instantly discredited as propaganda. Good!
Barred White House reporters might now focus on substantive reporting. Good!
But also, maybe just maybe, some of the right-wing outlets now roaming the White House might actually ask Trump questions that he probably shouldn’t answer honestly…but now might in the thrall of omnipresent sycophancy.
TCB
NEWSFUCKER DU JOUR Here’s the message Kira allowed me to share with all of you Newsfuckers about why she upgraded to a paid TFN subscription:
Wow, thank you, Kira! TFN has been getting a lot of new subscribers lately…but without a proportionate boost in paid subscribers. I’m guessing most folks who become paid subscribers do so because they’ve been here a while and end up deciding TFN has become enough a part of their day for them to chip in and help make it sustainable for me to keep doing it. If that’s not you, I hope you’ll stick around and see if TFN becomes a habit for you, too! If you have been here for a while, and if you can afford it, please consider making a donation or upgrading to paid so together we make sure I can keep TFN going. Thanks!
TAKING ACTION Some dates/details unconfirmed! But remember to do your Friday-buying on Thursday if you’re planning on participating in the Friday economic boycott.
Upcoming Actions
Feb. 28: “Hit Them In their Profits” — a day not to buy things.
March 7-14: Amazon — A week of buying nothing from Amazon. We can do this!
March 14: National Strike — If you can, and if you need an excuse to skip work, this is the day.
More here that I’ll try to sort through and list.
Resources
CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!
Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, 71% of Trump voters oppose what they’re doing…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with John Stewart and The Young Turks.
Formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Who doesn’t like cherries?!?
Jonathan I don’t know how you continue to be clear eyed and hilarious in the face of this onslaught, but I am so very grateful. Knowing I can read about what happening and not want to step in front of a bus immediately afterward is such a gift at this moment. You keep me fighting the good fight.
"This is political suicide." From your lips to god's ears. Let's hope that Trump does jump off a metaphorical bridge, put his metaphorical head in a metaphorical gas oven, swallow a fistful of metaphorical percosets, and/or put a metaphorical semiautomatic weapon to his metaphorical brain and pull the trigger. Because if things don't work out like that we're all in metaphorical deep water.