Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Monday said after a conversation with President Donald Trump that the 47th president said he wants “NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS.”
“Just had a great talk with President Trump about the Big, Beautiful Bill. He said again, NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS,” Hawley wrote on X.
Hawley has struck a hard position now that the Senate will consider potential changes to the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill. The legislation, as crafted by House lawmakers, would find $880 billion in savings by making various changes to the entitlement program.
The One Big Beautiful Bill enacts work requirements for Medicaid for those who are able-bodied adults without dependents, requires eligibility twice per year instead of the standard one time per year, and seeks to remove waste, fraud, and abuse from the program.
One study found that there were $1.1 trillion in improper payments over the last decade.
Hawley wrote in a New York Times op-ed that cutting healthcare benefits for the poor “is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
The Missouri conservative’s hardline position will inevitably clash with fiscal hawks such as Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who believe that the legislation, as passed through the House, adds too much to the deficit.
Paul explained in an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle:
What will happen in the next couple months is the Big Beautiful Bill, which I support a lot of, I don’t support the additional $5 trillion in debt and that’s going to be attached in the bill. That’s a hard place for me as I support much of what’s in the bill, tax cuts, spending cuts, plus more spending cuts if we can get them. But I can’t reconcile myself to adding $5 trillion in debt, raising the debt ceiling. Really, this year, the debt’s going to be $2.2 trillion and the Republicans have largely continued the Biden spending levels. They’re anticipating $5 trillion in two years, and that means next year’s deficit that some people are saying it’s going to grow to over $3 trillion a year again. It’s because we need to have more force of character to be against spending.
The fact we’ve limited ourselves to not really looking at the entitlements just doesn’t leave that much spending we can look at. My fear is that when this bill passes that the ramifications a year out, two years out, will be, ‘My goodness, what happened to DOGE? What happened to the spending cuts? Why is the deficit so big still?’ So I am working very hard to make sure there is still at least a part of the party — and it doesn’t have to be anti-Donald Trump because I’m for him in so many ways — but it also means people still have to stand up and present their own ideas of what they’re for.
Paul added, “If we don’t have that, I think all of a sudden if we have a massive amount of debt and Republicans are for it, who’s left to be opposed to it? Democrats certainly don’t care about the debt. Once Republicans are on record as supporting the debt, who’s left? So this still continues to be a big project for me.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.