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house budget committee
On Medicare's Birthday, A State-by-State Look at Trump's Threat to Seniors
In Pennsylvania, for instance, "830,000 seniors and people with disabilities in Pennsylvania" would have to "pay an average of $470 more every year for prescription drugs" if Trump and the right-wing groups behind Project 2025 get their way.
Project 2025's sprawling policy document—which at least 140 former Trump administration officials helped craft—calls for the "repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)."
"These programs are lifelines for millions of Americans, but the Trump-Vance ticket and their extreme allies threaten to cut funding."
Nationwide, Democrats on the House budget panel estimate that a repeal of the IRA would raise drug costs for at least 18 million seniors.
Project 2025 would also "make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option" for seniors—a step toward the
total privatization of Medicare.
"For 59 years, Medicare and Medicaid have served as a critical lifeline for seniors, families, children, Americans with disabilities, and so many others," Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. "Unfortunately, extreme MAGA Republicans have a different, darker vision for our healthcare system."
"Trump's Project 2025 agenda would repeal the lifesaving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, raise premiums on seniors, and risk their access to doctors and services under Medicare," Boyle continued. "House Republicans' budget plans show they are 100% on board with Trump's Project 2025 agenda, which will give Big Pharma a windfall while putting the tens of millions of Americans who get their health coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, and the [Affordable Care Act] on the chopping block."
"Make no mistake," he added, "Trump's Project 2025 agenda will take us backward and leave more Americans sick, uninsured, and burdened with crushing medical debt."
Since President Joe Biden signed it into law, Trump has repeatedly assailed the IRA, calling it a "mammoth socialist" law and signaling that he would work to dismantle it should he win another four years in the White House.
While Trump and Republican lawmakers have postured as defenders of Medicare and Social Security—the GOP's 2024 platform vows to "fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts"—their actions while in positions of power belie their rhetoric.
Trump proposed major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs during each of his first four years in the White House, and a congressional panel comprised of three-quarters of the House Republican caucus released a budget blueprint last year that called for raising the retirement age—which would cut Social Security benefits across the board.
As recently as March, Trump declared in an interview that "there is a lot you can do... in terms of cutting" programs like Social Security and Medicare. The former president later tried to walk back the comments.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, once described Social Security and Medicare benefits as "the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity."
"These programs are lifelines for millions of Americans, but the Trump-Vance ticket and their extreme allies threaten to cut funding—just like Trump proposed every year of his presidency—and undo the Biden-Harris administration's work to lower prescription drug costs for seniors," Alex Floyd, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday. "Trump and Vance's Project 2025 agenda to leave our seniors high and dry is destructive, extreme, and deeply unpopular—which the American people will make clear when they reject it in November."
Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, echoed that sentiment, calling Trump "the biggest threat to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security since their inception."
"He tried cutting Social Security and Medicare every single year he was in office," Moussa said Tuesday. "There is only one candidate in this race who will protect and expand earned benefits programs that millions of Americans rely on—Vice President Harris."
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