WASHINGTON—The House Republican-passed “clean” money bill to keep the government going, which the Senate rejected in mid-September, contains a hidden cut of almost $491 billion in Medicare payments over the next decade, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., warns.
And unless Congress does something about preserving Medicare from that slash, it’ll start to take effect next calendar year, he adds.
The Medicare cut isn’t the sole problem with the temporary money bill, called a continuing resolution (CR), to keep the government going after Sept. 30. The CR also lets an Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) tax subsidy expire. That would drive up the cost of health care for millions of people.
The GOP-run House passed its CR on a party-line vote—while doing nothing about Medicare—but the Senate rejected both it and a Democratic substitute which added back money for Medicaid, not Medicare.
Neither dealt with workers’ issues, either, notably the threat of a government shutdown.
That irked Everett Kelley, president of the Government Employees (AFGE). His union’s main goal, which lawmakers also ignored, would reverse President Donald Trump’s executive orders eliminating union contracts for 1.45 million federal employees. But Kelley wants lawmakers to keep the lights on and the government running.
“Congress has a duty to fund government agencies on time, but it has an equally important duty to rein in an out-of-control executive branch,” said Kelley, whose union represents—or represented before Trump trashed their contracts—a million-plus federal workers.
“Without safeguards, federal employees will continue to face untenable working conditions.”
They will, if they can keep their jobs. The Trump administration plans to pursue permanent mass firings of federal workers if the government is shut down. Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said he would launch major reductions in force in the event of a closure.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., characterized the OMB plan as an “attempt at intimidation,” while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called Vought a “malignant political hack” on X.
As for Sen. Whitehouse, he said it’s absolutely essential to prevent the massive Medicare cuts. He tried during Senate debate, but Republicans there blocked him.
Whitehouse’s speech this week, plus prior GOP statements about the future fate of both Medicare and Social Security, show the nation’s key retirement programs are now tangled up in the party’s ideological anti-spending drive—and its tax bonanza for billionaires.
Add to wealth of top 1%
Both add to the wealth of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us. Corporate interests which back both initiatives are also key financiers of lawmakers, notably Republicans.
If the government partially shut at midnight on Sept. 30, hundreds of thousands of workers would not report to shuttered offices. “Essential” ones, such as air traffic controllers, would keep working but without pay. Unknown numbers more could be permanently fired, if the OMB’s Vought has his way.
Whitehouse explained in a Senate floor speech on Sept. 19 that the Medicare cut would total $491 billion over ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It would be automatic due to Congress’s 15-year-old “Pay As You Go” budget act.
That law says if a budget bill increases the national debt by more than a set percentage—as Trump’s “big beautiful bill” did to cover the costs of its $4.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires and corporations—all other federal spending would be automatically cut.
“Sequestration” is the official term. Amounts and percentages of cuts varied over the years. Whitehouse’s point is sequestration covers everything, including Medicare.
“There were a great many dirty tricks tucked in” the big beautiful bill “to hurt people and make billionaires wealthier and happier and more free to pollute,” Whitehouse began. “Perhaps the trickiest was the one that was so hidden that it wasn’t even mentioned in the bill, and that is about a half-trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare.”
Pay-As-You-Go, Whitehouse explained, “requires a look at bills that create enormous additions to our national debt. To protect ourselves, it cuts other mandatory accounts.” Automatic cuts are supposed to discourage Congress from running up trillions of dollars in debt. They haven’t, and this time, Congress didn’t defer the cuts.
“Guess what is lined up for automatic cuts under the statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act? Yep, Medicare,” Whitehouse, a former state Attorney General, said.
“The same Medicare that we saw that huge demonstration from Republicans during President Biden’s State of the Union speech” last year “when he said Republicans want to cut Medicare, and they rose in ire and anger to say that’s not possibly true.
Didn’t last long
“And he said, ‘Oh, I think we have unanimity here, I think we have agreement, no cuts to Medicare.’ Well, that didn’t last long,” Whitehouse deadpanned.
“The cuts to Medicare just had to be well hidden…. We’ve asked the Congressional Budget Office what it means. How big will the cuts be? When will they take place? Well, here’s the outcome. Given the magnitude of this massive increase, it will create a $45 billion cut to Medicare in 2026, next year,” and $45 billion in 2027.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a one-time thing. It’s going to keep going. In the following year, it goes up and up. By 2034, the end of the 10-year budget window we work in, the annual cut to Medicare will be $76 billion. If you stack up all those cuts year after year…the cut to Medicare… is $491 billion.”
Whitehouse rounded CBO’s total to the more eye-catching figure of half-a-trillion dollars. He calls it “the total hit to Medicare by Republicans in their Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill.”
“Was that an oversight, or is this a trick to try to tee up cuts to Medicare that they don’t have to own?” the senator asked. “They could have added a simple line saying when it comes to Medicare and the huge addition to the debt from their Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill, PAYGO sequestration will be lifted.”
The House didn’t add that line, and neither did the Senate. Meanwhile, Trump, who controls the congressional GOP, refuses to negotiate with Senate Democrats on a compromise money bill to keep the government going, with or without protecting Medicare from the automatic cuts.
That’s because Senate Democrats, whose votes Trump needs, insist on repealing prior Republican Medicaid cuts. Trump refuses, and peremptorily called off talks with congressional Democratic leaders.
As a result, the government faces at least a partial shutdown, of all but “essential” services, at midnight Sept. 30.
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