The laziest argument in all of politics is this: You can’t cut that program and leave people hanging! It’s cruel!
Unfortunately, it’s also one of the more successful political arguments. Who doesn’t want to be “generous” by helping other people?
That’s the case Democrats (and a few Republicans who should know better) have been making for months now regarding Medicaid. As I noted when OBBBA passed a couple of weeks ago, the law eliminates $1 trillion in waste from Medicaid. However, after growing by roughly 60% since 2019, the program is still slated to increase by approximately $1 trillion over the next 10 years, so, again, the “cuts” are actually reductions in growth.
As the bill worked its way through Congress, the Leftmedia gladly did Democrats’ bidding by almost literally screaming from the hilltops about all the poor people who would be cut off from the safety net, but the reality is that millions have become couch potatoes when they could be working and providing their own income. The program was not designed to cater to individuals who can provide for themselves.
Our Michael Swartz delved into the Medicaid debate in June, explaining that Republicans were introducing work requirements for able-bodied recipients of any Medicaid benefits — and even those don’t have to take effect until December 31, 2026. Furthermore, he said, “The other major change would be to eject illegal aliens off the Medicaid rolls, which they shouldn’t be on in the first place, but to no one’s surprise, several Democrat-run states had added them anyway.”
None of those details mattered to the politicos advancing the “you can’t cut that” narrative. The truth does matter, though.
I began this article by using the word “laziest.” Do you know who else is the laziest? Many Medicaid recipients. Kevin Corinth of the American Enterprise Institute lays out the somehow not-so-shocking truth:
For Medicaid recipients who do not report working, the most common activity after sleeping is watching television and playing video games. They spend 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, or 125 hours during a 30-day month. That is more than 50 percent higher than the 80 hours they would be required to work or otherwise engage with the community during at least some months under the reconciliation bill. They spend on average 6.1 hours per day, or 184 hours per month on all socializing, relaxing and leisure activities (including television and video games). [Emphasis added.]
Democrats want you to think it’s cruel to ask those recipients to put down the video game controller and spend 80 hours per month doing something productive. That means, as The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board put it, “The Democratic position is that Medicaid should be a free universal benefit for men who refuse to work.”
Pro tip: It’s not helping people to enable them to remain dependent on a government program in perpetuity while they fill their time with vain pursuits. Redistributing taxpayer income to able-bodied or illegal-alien recipients is, frankly, theft from taxpayers.
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government,” said the author of our Constitution, James Madison.
Nevertheless, many Christians fall prey to the Democrats’ false generosity gospel because Jesus did tell us to care for the poor. Here’s the rub: He told His followers to do so; He did not issue a call for the Roman government (or any other government) to do it. Left-wing churches might spend a little less time destroying God’s created gender order and a little more time helping those in real need.
Finally, leftists are not only caterwauling for Medicaid recipients, they’re screaming about how hard OBBBA’s budget will be for state governments. “By slashing health care and food assistance for low-income Americans,” Politico frets, “Republicans in Washington are passing tremendous costs onto the states, leaving local leaders from both parties grasping for ways to make up for billions in lost federal dollars.”
Why will this be hard on states? Because in states like New York, Politico admits, “About 44 percent of the state’s residents are enrolled in Medicaid or have state-sponsored coverage.”
Oh.
In short, no one is “gutting the social safety net.” Far from it, in fact. If 44% of a state’s population is on the dole, clearly that means the net has become a hammock for too many. OBBBA took only the most modest steps in changing that gloomy reality.
