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{"id":6598,"date":"2025-02-25T19:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T19:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-use-committee-hearing-to-rail-against-gop-medicaid-cuts-and-doge\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T19:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T19:19:06","slug":"democrats-use-committee-hearing-to-rail-against-gop-medicaid-cuts-and-doge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/democrats-use-committee-hearing-to-rail-against-gop-medicaid-cuts-and-doge\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats use committee hearing to rail against GOP Medicaid cuts and DOGE"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Tensions are boiling over inside the typically bipartisan House Energy and Commerce Committee, with Democrats railing against Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency and the GOP\u2019s plan to extend Trump-era tax cuts.<\/p>\n<p>With little power in GOP-led Washington, Democrats are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2025\/02\/24\/congress\/democrats-plot-difficult-votes-for-energy-and-commerce-republicans-00205781\" target=\"_blank\">hijacking a markup<\/a> to adopt the committee\u2019s oversight plan to advance their message \u2014 both by speechifying and forcing votes on more than 50 likely-doomed amendments on thorny issues like preventing spending cuts to Medicaid, condemning President Donald Trump\u2019s firing of inspectors general and disapproving of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s anti-vaccine leanings. <\/p>\n<p>At times raising their voices and pounding the dias, Democrats are arguing this isn\u2019t business-as-usual amid what they see as unconstitutional and illegal behavior from the Trump administration, and that the Republican oversight plan for committee business in the 119th Congress does little to hold the president and his people to account.<\/p>\n<p>Lawmakers sparred over one amendment for more than an hour aimed at preventing cuts to Medicaid. House Republicans are looking to ram through a <a href=\"https:\/\/legislation.politicopro.com\/bill\/US_119_HCONRES_14\" target=\"_blank\">budget resolution<\/a> later in the day that would set parameters for the major party-line package to enact huge swaths of Trump\u2019s domestic agenda. <\/p>\n<p>It may not have the support to advance amid concerns from many lawmakers \u2014 including some who sit on Energy and Commerce \u2014 about the likelihood of having to make major reductions to Medicaid in order to finance the bill. The safety net program is directly under the committee\u2019s purview, putting Energy and Commerce members at the tip of the spear of a politically dicey exercise.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans have tried to tamp down opposition by saying those offsets would be secured through more work requirements and taking away benefits from illegal immigrants. Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/190067\" target=\"_blank\" data-person-id=\"190067\">Buddy Carter<\/a> (R-Ga.), the chair of the health subcommittee, said Medicaid needs to be preserved to protect vulnerable Americans as unchecked spending growth is putting the program at risk, and that fraud, waste and abuse in the system should be addressed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re only going to do this in a responsible way,\u201d said full committee chair <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/190067\" target=\"_blank\" data-person-id=\"190067\">Brett Guthrie<\/a> (R-Ky.). \u201cWe\u2019re not going to do this in a way that threatens hospitals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Democrats countered the GOP will not be able to reach its savings target without major disruptions to Medicaid benefits across-the-board.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have not heard a single concrete number of the amount of waste and abuse that has been identified. There\u2019s kind of this vague magic wand around waste,\u201d said Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/304452\" target=\"_blank\" data-person-id=\"304452\">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a> (D-N.Y.). \u201cWhat\u2019s being suggested is that \u2026 people people seeing the doctor is a waste.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The amendment was not adopted, with no Republican voting in favor.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans are largely defending their oversight plan, saying it closely hews to the agenda roadmap the GOP-led Energy and Commerce Committee advanced in the previous Congress. But speaking in favor of one Democratic amendment that would have the panel investigate the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s recent funding cuts at the National Institute of Health, Ocasio-Cortez said such comparisons were disingenuous. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cDOGE did not exist two years ago. Nineteen-year-olds were not raiding the Treasury two years ago,\u201d Ocasio-Cortez said. \u201cElon Musk is not a scientist. He is not an engineer. He is a billionaire conman with a lot of money. \u2026 These are peoples\u2019 lives that are on the line and we cannot laugh them away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carter countered the Trump administration is looking to make the health research agency more efficient and pointed to declining trust in health agencies: \u201cThis committee has the broadest jurisdiction of any committee in Congress. It would be virtually impossible for us to include everything we\u2019re going to be looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51349\" target=\"_blank\" data-person-id=\"51349\">Diana DeGette<\/a> (D-Colo.), the ranking member of the panel\u2019s health subcommittee, fired back, saying that such plans are generally inclusive of what the party in power wants.<\/p>\n<p>That amendment was voted down along party lines, alongside another amendment that would have added language to the oversight blueprint instructing the committee to \u201cinvestigate the constitutionality and legality of the Trump administration\u2019s seizure of congressionally appropriated funds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tensions are boiling over inside the typically bipartisan House Energy and Commerce Committee, with Democrats railing against Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency and the GOP\u2019s plan to extend Trump-era tax cuts. With little power in GOP-led Washington, Democrats are hijacking a markup to adopt the committee\u2019s oversight plan to advance their message \u2014 both [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}