OMB director flatly denies megabill represents an attack on the social safety net

Politico

2 days ago

President Donald Trump's top budget officer is playing down concerns among Republican senators that the administration's sweeping megabill will add to the budget deficit and result in politically punishing Medicaid cuts.
'We continue to work with people in the Senate as to working them through the specifics of the bill, what it does and what it doesn't do,' Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday on 'State of the Union.' 'We'll continue to do that. And I think at the end of the day, the Senate will have a resounding vote in favor of a substantially similar bill.
Trump's domestic policy package, which passed the House by a single vote in May, faces a rocky road in the Senate. One obstacle: Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, as well as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), have all signaled discomfort in the face of potential cuts to Medicaid.
Despite Trump's insistence in April that there would be no cuts to the critical health program, a Congressional Budget Office report last month estimated 10.3 million people would lose coverage if the Medicaid portions of the megabill see daylight.
Vought, who previously served as one of the chief architects of the much-maligned Project 2025 initiative, flatly denied that the bill represented an attack on social safety net programs.
'I think they're totally ridiculous. This is astroturf. This bill will preserve and protect the programs, the social safety net, but it will make it much more common sense,' Vought told Bash.
'Look, one out of every $5 or $6 in Medicaid is improper. We have illegal immigrants on the program. We have able-bodied working adults that don't have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even SNAP. And those are something that's very important to institute. That's what this bill does. No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.'
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock represents the only state with a work requirement program for Medicaid eligibility. Less than 7,000 people were enrolled in the first 18 months of Georgia's Pathways to Coverage initiative, vastly fewer than the state's initial expectations. And the project has been beset by administrative costs.
'The data clearly shows that if you want to get people to work, the way to do that is to provide them just basic health care so that they don't get sick,' Warnock, a Democrat, told Kristen Welker on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' also on Sunday.
'And what they're trying to do now is take this terrible experiment in Georgia, force it on the whole nation. And what we will see as a result of that is a workforce that is sicker and poorer and an economy that's weaker.'
Deficit hawks, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Elon Musk, have also played up concerns about the bill's impact on the debt.
'I think that's the Titanic,' Johnson said in May. Johnson has said he has enough allies in the Senate to stop the process absent what he sees as adequate spending reductions.
Musk told CBS he thinks the bill would increase the deficit and 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.'
'I love Elon, this bill doesn't increase the deficit or hurt the debt,' Vought told Bash on Sunday. 'In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion.'