In February 2025, a rumor spread that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican Party budget resolution that would slash the Medicaid budget.
On X, users (archived) claimed (archived) the resolution would have consequences including $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poorest Americans. One wrote (emphasis ours):
The MAGA influencers are out in full force tonight, lying to their followers by making up things that were not in this resolution. Congrats on getting your $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy, $19 trillion in added deficit spending, and $880 billion in Medicaid cuts through this initial step, though.
Snopes readers also wrote in to ask us whether the measure would gut Medicaid.
On Feb. 25, the House of Representatives did pass a budget resolution that establishes the congressional budget for fiscal year 2025 and sets up the process of setting the budget levels for each year through 2034. The 217-215 vote fell along party lines, with all Democrats and just one Republican opposed.
The resolution calls for cuts of $880 billion over the next decade from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees health care spending programs including Medicaid and Medicare. The bill does not mention direct cuts to Medicaid specifically; however, cuts of that size are expected to affect Medicaid if officials opt not to cut funding for the other major government health program, Medicare.
President Donald Trump has shown some inconsistency regarding the budget bill and its potential effects on Medicaid. He endorsed the resolution on Feb. 19, 2025, saying it implemented his "FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it!"
However, Trump also promised his government would not touch Medicaid. He appeared in a Fox News interview alongside his cost-cutting chief Elon Musk on Feb. 19. Fox News host Sean Hannity said he wanted to give Trump the opportunity to respond to people who were trying to "stoke fears" around "grandma's social security and Medicare." Trump responded:
Social Security won't be touched, other than this fraud or something we're going to find — it's going to be strengthened but won't be touched. Medicare, Medicaid, none of that stuff is going to be touched.
A day after the bill passed, Trump reiterated this stance at a news conference where a reporter asked if he could guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending would not be altered. He answered:
Yeah, I mean, I've said it so many times, you shouldn't be asking me that question. OK? This will not be "read my lips," it won't be "read my lips" anymore. We're not going to touch it.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who pushed the budget plan through the House, rebuffed accusations that it would target Medicaid funding. On the day the bill passed, he told reporters:
Medicaid is hugely problematic because it has a lot of fraud, waste and abuse. Everybody knows that. We all know intuitively, no one in here would disagree. […] They asked the experts, and the estimate is, I think it's $50 billion a year in fraud alone in Medicaid. Those are precious taxpayer dollars. Everybody is committed to preserving Medicare benefits for those who desperately need it and deserve it and qualify for it. What we're talking about is rooting out the fraud, waste and abuse. […] It preserves the program so that it is available for the people who desperately need it.
Critics of the budget plan have argued that these claims don't hold up to scrutiny. Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who voted against the resolution, posted a video to X on Feb. 25 in which she outlined that the proposed $880 billion cut would serve as an "attack on Medicaid, not 'waste,' 'fraud,' and 'abuse'" (archived). She said:
The order that's been sent down here is "find $880 billion." Not "there is $880 billion of waste, fraud and abuse." It's "find $880 billion," and so we have not heard a single concrete number of the amount of waste that's been identified.
The Senate will now be under pressure to take up the House's spending framework, despite its separate resolution that was agreed on Feb. 21, 2025. According to the political digital magazine Politico, Senate Republicans are largely prepared to switch to the House's plan but have already begun discussing changes to the House resolution.