Democrats hammer Vought over Medicaid claims: ‘Outrageous lies'

The Hill

2 days ago

Democratic lawmakers are admonishing President Trump's budget chief for claiming the GOP's mega-bill will not cause anyone to lose Medicaid benefits, contradicting independent assessments that war billions could lose coverage if it becomes law.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday's episode of 'State of the Union' that concerns over the Trump administration's domestic policy package are 'ridiculous.'
'This bill will preserve and protect the programs, the social safety net, but it will make it much more common sense,' he said. 'No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.'
Democratic lawmakers took to social media to push back against Vought, with some including U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), calling his comments lies.
'Outrageous lies. In Ohio alone, the state has said 770,000 people will lose coverage,' Brown wrote Sunday above a repost of Vought's CNN interview on the social platform X.
'The White House is lying to you,' Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa) wrote in a post to X on Monday. 'At least 13.7 million Americans will lose their health care, according to the official non-partisan score keepers.'
Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — would cut taxes and increase border and military spending. The bill, which narrowly passed in the House in May, would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by at least $600 billion over 10 years and cut enrollment in the program by about 10.3 million people, according to a preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
Several GOP senators are expressing concern about the cuts, pointing to a fight with deficit hawks that could pose major hurdles to Trump's signature legislation.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Josh Hawley have opposed cuts to the health insurance program, though it's unclear where they will draw the line.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn) suggested that Vought double check is math before speaking about the consequences of the bill.
'Math is hard…but Google is free,' Smith wrote in a post to X above a screenshot of a paragraph from the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the bill's resulting Medicaid cuts, which was placed above a clip of Vought's CNN interview.
Meanwhile, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) posted a lengthy takedown of Vought's comments.
'The Republican budget bill 'preserved and protects' social safety net programs,' she said in a 14-post thread. 'A blatant lie as I'm unaware of how cutting over a trillion dollars and kicking millions of Americans off health care is 'preserving and protecting' this program.'