Senate Republicans are eyeing possible Medicare provisions to help offset the cost of their megabill as they try to appease budget hawks who want more spending cuts embedded in the legislation.
Making changes to Medicare, the federal health insurance program primarily serving seniors, would be a political long shot: It would face fierce backlash from some corners of the Senate GOP, not to mention across the Capitol, where Medicare proposals were floated but didn’t gain traction.
But Senate Republicans are now seriously considering it as they race to pass their party-line tax and spending package before a self-imposed July 4 deadline. The idea came up in closed-door meetings this week and, crucially, some Republicans believe President Donald Trump is on board with touching the program as long as it’s limited to “waste, fraud and abuse.”
“I think anything that is waste, fraud and abuse are obviously open to discussions,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday when asked about Medicare.
Cracking down on some smaller areas of the vast program could net significant savings for Senate Republicans. The other main area they’re planning to tap is ratcheting down the House-negotiated state-and-local-tax-deduction cap — as Thune first acknowledged to POLITICO Tuesday. Both are politically explosive areas that will trigger serious blowback in the House.
“I think the focus, as you know, has been on addressing waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid,” Thune added when pressed on Medicare. “But right now we’re open to suggestions if people have them about other areas where there is clearly waste, fraud and abuse that can be rooted out in any government program.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who was among the Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee who went to the White House Wednesday to meet with Trump about the tax portion of their megabill, told reporters he believed the president was more amenable to making Medicare changes than he might have previously let on.
“I think the president is actually open to any elimination of any waste, fraud and abuse … wherever,” he said, though added that Trump “doesn’t want to cut benefits.”
Finance Committee Republicans wanted to use their audience with Trump to press their case for making certain business tax incentives permanent, but a significant chunk of the conversation instead focused on senators pitching their individual ideas for how to inject more savings into their…
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