Mike Johnson CALLED OUT for cutting healthcare for 1.4 million of his OWN voters

Mike Johnson CALLED OUT for cutting healthcare for 1.4 million of his OWN voters

The CBO found that nearly 8 million Americans will in fact lose their insurance coverage because of the changes this bill makes to Medicaid. So, how do you reconcile that with what President Trump said? Uh, it’s directly in line with what the president said. I’ve said the same. We are not cutting Medicaid in this uh package. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this, Jake. The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse. And what I mean, what do I mean by that? You got more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid. Medicaid is not intended for non- US citizens. It’s intended for the most vulnerable populations of Americans, which is pregnant women and young single mothers, the disabled, the elderly. They are protected in what we’re doing because we’re preserving the resources for those who need it most. You’re talking about 4.8 million able-bodied workers, young men, for example, who are on Medicaid and not working. They are choosing not to work when they can. That is called fraud. They are cheating the system. When you root out those kinds of abuses, you save the resources that are so desperately needed by the people who deserve it and need it most. That’s what we’re doing. And that’s why this is a u the morality of what we’re doing here is precisely right. And it comports with all the public opinion polls. When people ask whether young men, for example, who are able-bodied and have no dependent should be working, everybody says yes. And that’s what our package does. So these estimates that you’re hearing uh are are accurate, but it’s it’s dealing with those uh numbers of of people in the population and that’s going to make the preserve the program and strengthen it for those who need it most. So 1.4 million people in your home state of Louisiana are on Medicaid. More than 800,000 receive uh SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps. Is it your contention that if any of those Louisianans lose their benefits, it’s because they shouldn’t have been receiving them because they were committing waste, fraud, or abuse? Yeah. Look, my district, as every district in America, has people who are on the program who shouldn’t. And when you’re talking about, I keep using this example, a young able-bodied man with no dependence, there’s no reason he should not be working. We are the party about that that supports human dignity, and we find purpose and dignity in our work. It’s good for the individuals involved. It’s good for their community. It’s good for society at large. When you’re talking about work requirements, by the way, it’s very flexible. It just means that you either work or you volunteer, do something meaningful in your community or you’re in a job or work training program 20 hours a week. I mean, this is not some huge uh demand. Uh if you’re going to be on the public wagon, you have to do something to help pull it if you’re able. First of all, when Mike Johnson says that Republicans are quote not cutting Medicaid in this package, that is a bald-faced lie. This bill absolutely 100% cuts Medicaid to the tune of $700 billion. But it does so by imposing ownorous work requirements that make it so difficult to access and maintain coverage that millions of people will be forced off the roles. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has scored this bill and said that it would result in a staggering 13.7 million Americans losing their healthcare. So to claim that this bill wouldn’t cut Medicaid when a population three times the size of Mike Johnson’s own home state of Louisiana will be stripped of their Medicaid coverage goes to show just how shameless this person is. He even tries justifying this Republican budget bill’s deep cuts to Medicaid by suggesting that 1.4 million voters from his own home state, including from his own district, don’t deserve it. That’s a third of the entire state population of Louisiana. His contention is that every single person who’s about to have their Medicaid stripped away is committing some type of fraud. And so every single cut is somehow warranted and justified. So let’s be clear about who Medicaid actually serves. This program’s eligibility is strictly income based wherein your income needs to be below $34,800 at most to qualify. Depends on the states, but that’s the top threshold. Think about that for a moment. 35,000 bucks a year. These are working American families, elderly Americans, people with disabilities, and children who literally cannot afford health care any other way. If you think that these people are gaming the system or getting away with murder here, then you might want to rethink your math and consider what it costs not to thrive, but to simply survive in the United States of America today. The notion that we should be going after these people is batshit crazy unto itself. But what makes it even worse is that Republicans are going after these people expressly to offset a tax cut for the top 0.1% of Americans. According to the Pen Wharton analysis, people making between about 17,000 and 51,000 could lose about $700 on average. People reporting less than 17,000 in income would see a reduction closer to $1,000 on average. By contrast, the top 0.1%, including those with incomes over $4.3 million, would gain on average more than $389,000 in after tax income in 2026. In other words, hundreds of thousands of dollars in giveaways to the richest Americans and a net loss in after tax income for the working class, exacerbated, of course, by the fact that healthcare will be gutted. But of course, Mike Johnson isn’t moved by any of this because he’s decided that anybody who’s about to lose their Medicaid was receiving it fraudulently. That’s a pretty big claim to throw out there that people are committing fraud left and right. And one might think that with all this purported fraud that we’ll see charges being filed left and right. But just like how Elon Musk cried fraud to justify gutting the federal government via Doge, there were no charges. And here there won’t be any charges either because the fraud accusations are not real. They are simply an excuse to hide the fact that Republicans don’t give a flying about the working class and are looking for any excuse, any justification to trot out on television and justify their giveaway to the healthiest Americans. In fact, I posed that same question to Tommy Lahren on Alexson’s show on Fox LA, and she too didn’t have much of an answer here. I I think you and I can both agree that if if if these folks are committing fraud, that is a serious crime. Uh probably the most serious crime that you could commit. And I mean, anybody who is committing fraud would obviously be charged, tried, convicted. And so, can you explain to me how we’ve been hearing this talking point about fraud, all this fraud is getting eliminated over and over and over again, and yet not a single charge has been filed. So, if there’s all this fraud that Elon Musk is tweeting about on a daily basis, that Fox is hosting interviews to discuss, where are the charges? I can’t wait for those charges to come down. As you know, it takes a little while. Now, let’s be clear. The fraud charges aren’t going to happen. and Republicans know they’re not going to happen. But this claim serves as the GOP’s placeholder so that they have some plausible deniability to make these cuts knowing that by the time we realize there’s no fraud. The bill will have already passed, Republicans will have already gotten their tax cuts and it’ll be a done deal. So, they’ll just lie right now because it’s not about protecting people. It is about buying time until they can codify their tax cut. What’s particularly gling though is how Republicans like Mike Johnson and others will wrap this cruelty in the language of fiscal responsibility. They’ll talk about waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid as if there are millions of people fraudulently collecting benefits. But study after study has already shown that fraud rates in Medicaid are extremely low, usually less than 1% of total spending. The real waste in our health care system is the massive profits being extracted by insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. But Republicans never want to talk about that. And that’s the disconnect between Republican rhetoric and reality. Mike Johnson represents Louisiana again, a state with some of the highest poverty rates in the entire United States. Louisiana has terrible health outcomes, objectively speaking, high rates of diabetes, of heart disease, of infant mortality. His constituents need Medicaid. But Johnson would rather score political points by attacking government dependency than actually help the people who elected him to serve. He’d rather give tax cuts to his wealthy donors than ensure that children in his own district can see a doctor when they’re sick. And let’s be honest about what happens when people lose Medicaid coverage. They don’t just stop getting sick. They don’t disappear. They still end up in the emergency rooms when they have heart attacks or strokes or when their diabetes gets out of control. They still need cancer treatment and dialysis and prescription medications. But now instead of having coverage through Medicaid, they’ll be uninsured, meaning hospitals will have to eat the cost of their care, which means higher prices for everybody else. Or these people will just suffer and die because they can’t afford treatment. But hey, pro-life party, am I right? This moment also reveals how Republicans really see their role in government because they don’t view themselves as public servants whose job is to help their constituents. They view themselves as gatekeepers whose job is to decide who deserves help and who doesn’t. Johnson isn’t asking here how can we make sure everyone in Louisiana has access to healthcare. What he’s asking is how can we kick as many people off of government programs as humanly possible. That’s not governing. That is cruelty for the sake of cruelty. So the next time that you hear Republicans talk about being pro-life or caring about family values, remember this moment. Remember Mike Johnson sitting on national television and saying that 1.4 million people in his own state don’t deserve healthcare. Remember that when Republicans had the choice between helping six people and giving tax cuts to billionaires, they chose billionaires just like they do every single time. Before you go, if you enjoyed this content and you want to see more and support independent media, please subscribe to this channel. The subscribe button will be right here on the screen. But second, the reality is that we are now in a political environment where this administration can lean on any of the social media platforms to suppress certain voices if they don’t like critical coverage. 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BREAKING #news – Mike Johnson called out for cutting healthcare for 1.4 million of his OWN voters

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