Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared earlier than the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, and—very similar to his embarrassing testimony earlier than the Home Methods and Means Committee the day earlier than—it was tough.
“Why is the national debt so very important that you’re trying to kick 16 million people off their health insurance, but increasing the national debt doesn’t seem to matter if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires and billionaire corporations?” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts requested Bessent, who dodged the query by making an attempt to parse the variety of folks shedding Medicaid.
“So you don’t want to answer the question,” Warren responded.
Bessent then claimed that the proposed price range cuts to Medicaid focused thousands and thousands of “illegal aliens” who’re receiving advantages, which is fake. Whereas sure teams, together with kids of immigrants, are eligible to obtain Medicaid, undocumented immigrants are usually not.
“Medicaid is not used for people who are not documented,” Warren shot again, turning her consideration to the committee chair to focus on the ethics behind Bessent’s method to addressing the nationwide deficit.
“I just want to say here, the part that troubles me the most is that the secretary is deeply worried about the deficit and is willing to knock 16 million, or, he says, ‘merely 11 million people’ off their health care, matters so much. But it doesn’t matter so much if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires. Then it’s okay to run up a big deficit. I think that’s wrong,” she mentioned.
Warren’s query cuts to the guts of the difficulty: The GOP exhibits little or no concern for the nationwide deficit on the subject of funneling cash to the wealthiest tax brackets. President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which most estimates present would add trillions of {dollars} to the nationwide deficit over the subsequent decade, makes that clear.
So whereas some Republicans are making a present of their considerations in regards to the debt created by their very own laws, their main concern appears to be that not sufficient folks will probably be stripped of Medicaid and different important packages to offset tax breaks for the wealthy.
