"Republicans took a bank shot at Medicare"
“I’m here to talk about what I consider to be the three pillars of economic security for most Americans: Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security,” said Senator Whitehouse. “The Trump administration is making a move against each of them.
We know about the Medicaid cuts because Republicans passed what I call the Big, Beautiful for Billionaires Bill, which cuts hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid. Republicans were tricky about it, so they moved the cuts for people until after the next election, so you’re not going to see the cuts until then.
Who will see the cuts? Hospitals, nursing homes, health centers, and everybody
who has to plan for next year’s funding. Women & Infants Hospital is
already anxious about what will happen to its finances, and it’s not like our
hospitals and healthcare providers are doing great already. There’s already
talk about a healthcare crisis in Rhode Island, and these looming Medicaid cuts
will make it worse.
“What they’re doing to Social Security is trying to bolex up its operations. They sent in DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] to damage the operation of Social Security, and drive out the people who work there, make the trains run on time, and make the systems work. They’ve messed around in the computer systems, and they're continuing to put pressure on people to leave.
To me, their plan is to so disable the
administration of Social Security that at some point, they don’t make payments,
even if it’s briefly. Then they say, ‘Aha, there’s been a foul-up in Social
Security. We need to take it over,’ and in will come the private equity folks
and tech bros. It’s a backdoor way to privatize Social Security - by creating
an emergency that you can then send in your private sector billionaire friends
to solve. They then get access to all that data about people. They get access
to all that money in the Social Security accounts.
“The third one we’re here to talk about today is Medicare. I
suspect everybody here depends on Medicare. Now, there’s no mention of Medicare
in the Big, Beautiful for Billionaires Bill, but if you know how a pool table
works, there’s something called a bank shot. You don’t go directly at it, you
bounce it off the bumper. Republicans took a bank shot at Medicare because they
know there’s an existing law that says if you run up the debt so much,
mandatory cuts to all sorts of things across the board are triggered, one of
which is Medicare.
“Republicans added over $4 trillion to the debt in the Big,
Beautiful Bill. That number is so big that it triggers the rule that requires
cuts to Medicare. They don’t mention Medicare in the bill, but they also don’t
prevent these cuts. It is on automatic pilot, which we want to prevent. That’s
why people like me are going around the country pointing this out - so
Republicans will realize they made a bad mistake and will back off so we can
get them to protect Medicare instead of taking this bank shot to hit Medicare.
“This graph shows how much would be cut out of Medicare each year during the process of automatic cuts because of the huge, trillion-dollar increases to the deficit and debt the Big, Beautiful Bill is causing.”
Last month, President Trump and Congressional Republicans passed their Big, Beautiful Bill, which cuts almost a trillion dollars from Medicaid and raises health insurance costs. The new law included a hidden cut to Medicare, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed to Senator Whitehouse in a letter on Friday. By adding $4.1 trillion to the national debt, the legislation automatically triggers the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Act, which will impose $536 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare over the next decade unless Congress takes bipartisan action.
The CBO letter explains that the Republicans’ Big, Beautiful
Bill will increase deficits relative to the January 2025 baseline by $2.1
trillion through 2029 and by $3.4 trillion through 2034. The law’s addition to
the deficit triggers the sequestration process under the Statutory PAYGO Act.
CBO estimates that the White House Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) will be required to issue a
sequestration order to reduce spending by a total of $415 billion in fiscal
year 2026, including a four percent sequestration cut to Medicare, which is
expected to cut $45 billion in 2026 and total of $536 billion over nine years.
Republicans could pass legislation waiving the PAYGO requirements, but did not
include such a measure in the Big, Beautiful Bill.
“I’m here to tell you that that is not going to happen, but
the way we prevent it from happening is by making sure that all of you, and
people across America, know how they pulled this trick to cut half a trillion
dollars out of Medicare while pretending not to, because they know about this
law and they think you don’t,” said Senator Whitehouse to the seniors gathered
at the Leon Mathieu Senior Center. “Now that the spotlight is on this mischief,
we’ve got a very good chance to stop it, and we’re going to start putting
pressure on them when we get back to Washington to fix this problem and exempt
Medicare from what is called the Sequestration law so
that you and Medicare are protected. That’s why I’m here today.”
Senator Whitehouse is also working to pass legislation to
protect Medicare and Social Security’s solvency in perpetuity by requiring the
nation’s highest earners to contribute their fair share.
Senator Whitehouse answered questions from residents on two unrelated issues.
Resident: The midterms are looming. Republicans
are scared of losing both houses. So, what are they doing? And then, what are
the Democrats doing to stop them?
Senator Whitehouse: Republicans are getting
nervous that they will lose the House and maybe the Senate. There’s a very good
chance that Democrats win back the House. I was just with U.S.
Representative Jamie Raskin (Democrat, New Jersey), who would
become the Chairman of House Judiciary if we win back the House. He was pretty
positive about our chances. I would love to have Seth Magaziner and Gabe
Amo be in the majority and be able to do good things for everybody,
rather than having to wait around while the troublemakers make trouble.
“The Senate side is harder, but we can do it. I’ve been down
to Texas recently to stir up good trouble for Democrats in that race. We’ve
been down in Florida stirring up good trouble to help Democrats in that race.
In North Carolina, we just got the perfect candidate: the former governor and
attorney general who has been elected and re-elected. People trust him in North
Carolina. Republican Tom Tillis is leaving Congress because
the Trump people were so awful to him and tried to bully him. He voted against
the billionaires’ bill and was very articulate about the Medicaid problems it
would cause in North Carolina. So his seat is vacant.
“And then, excitingly, just today, Sherrod Brown announced
he is coming back and running again in Ohio. He was defeated two years ago, but
he’s very popular. He’s probably the only Democrat who could win in Ohio. We
have the chance to win some of these seats, and that puts us in a position to
stop the mischief and start doing productive things.
“Now, for two years, Trump would still have a veto, so we’d
have to worry about that and negotiate with him, but that’s the way of the
political world. But Republicans wouldn’t have the power to do all sorts of mad
and crazy things and then terrorize the Republican members of the House and the
Senate so that nobody would stand up against Trump.
“It’s going to be a big deal when the House turns, and it’s
going to be even better if the Senate turns. There is a very good chance of
happening.
“I’ll say one more thing: Everybody thinks of the House and
the Senate as places where you pass laws. But another thing that could be done
is to investigate. We don’t just legislate. We can also investigate. You
remember the Watergate and January 6th hearings and the terrific presentations.
One of the reasons I’m in constant touch with Congressman Raskin is that he has
the ability, if he’s Chairman of Judiciary, to do significant investigations.
I’m in a position to help. If he puts out a subpoena, he can deliver it. If I
put on a subpoena, the Republicans in the Senate can filibuster it, which
they’ve done already. So it’s important for us to work together; we’re already
laying the groundwork for working together.
Resident: I know you’re involved in the Supreme
Court regarding all these litigations going through the system.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: I’ve been the lead
advocate for cleaning up the mess of the Supreme Court, which is pretty simple.
They should have an ethics code. People should have independent investigations
of whether or not the Justices broke the ethics rules. I don’t care who you
are. Somebody should investigate if there’s a credible allegation that you’ve
broken the ethics rules for your position. If it’s me, it’s the Senate
Ethics Committee. If it’s the Secretary of Commerce, it’s the Inspector
Generals and the ethics officials in the executive branch. If it’s the courts
here in Rhode Island, it’s the judicial ethics review process. There are only
nine people in the entire United States government who don’t have to have an
investigation about a credible ethics charge against them, and it’s those nine
members of the Supreme Court.
It is crazy that the only people exempt from proper
fact-finding and the rule of law are those who are supposed to defend and
exemplify proper fact-finding and the rule of law.
Then there’s term limits. There’s a lot of public support for 18-year term limits. I’ve got a bill to do that. Doing those two things will set the tone and create some turnover so the court can be refreshed and credible. One of the things that infuriates me is that we have a Supreme Court Justice who looks like he cheated on his taxes. We know that his friend gave him a loan for a free luxury motor home. We know that after making a few interest payments, the loan was forgiven, there was no more interest, and no principal was ever paid back. That’s called income. Tax Law 101: Forgiving a loan equals income. So the justice should have reported it on his judicial disclosure form as income, and he didn’t. And if he didn’t disclose it on his judicial disclosure form, what do you think the odds are that he didn’t disclose it to the tax people? I would say pretty good. It’s certainly a question that’s worth getting an answer to, but the Court has persistently refused to give me an answer to that question, and I think we’re entitled to have a Supreme Court where the justices pay their taxes and follow the law. That shouldn’t be asking much.
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