MEDICAID CUTS NOT OFF THE TABLE — Despite Medicaid “love” from President Donald Trump, his administration and House Republicans are poised to make deep cuts in the program, POLITICO’s Ben Leonard and Adam Cancryn report. Trump said last week that Medicaid was on the list of programs he wants to protect. He said he won’t “do anything” to Medicaid, except in cases of abuse or waste, claiming it wouldn’t impact beneficiaries. “It will only be more effective and better,” Trump said. The comments come as Republicans explore a sweeping overhaul of existing health policies that would likely include major changes to Medicaid to fund a significant portion of party-line legislation to enact Trump’s domestic agenda. Working with the White House, the House Energy and Commerce Committee was already on track to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from programs within the panel’s purview to offset the budget reconciliation effort, much of it coming from Medicaid. Now, fiscal hawks in the House Republican Conference are calling for even deeper spending cuts, threatening to exacerbate an already difficult task of explaining to constituents why Republicans want to scale back a program that insures more than 70 million Americans. “He wants to protect people’s health care, and so do we,” said Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) in an interview. “I’m afraid we’re going to get to a point where this is going to implode with $1.8 trillion worth of debt. It’s better to fix it now than later. … I absolutely agree with the sentiment he’s saying.” A White House spokesperson said the Trump administration “is committed to closely examining Medicaid to improve care for beneficiaries while identifying waste and abuse.” While further discussions with the White House are needed, Guthrie said, he expects that many of the proposals would still fit Trump’s criteria. KENNEDY PROCEDURAL VOTE — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one step closer to becoming the head of all federal health agencies after a key procedural vote Thursday night. The Senate voted 52-47 to move to executive session on Kennedy’s nomination, setting up a confirmation vote next week. Kennedy still has to clear two more votes in the coming days to become Health and Human Services secretary as Democrats used delaying tactics permitted under Senate rules, indicating their particular displeasure with the Kennedy nomination. Still, it’s been all but certain Kennedy will be confirmed as HHS secretary since Tuesday when Republican senators on the Finance Committee united to move his bid forward in a party-line vote. That included Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a doctor who initially said he was “struggling” with Kennedy’s reluctance to disavow false claims about vaccine safety but then agreed to support Kennedy after receiving several assurances from him. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he’d prioritize combating chronic diseases that he believes are the result of additives in the food Americans eat and pollution in the environment. He said health agencies have spent too much time and money on infectious diseases, allowing chronic diseases to grow. NEW SUBCOMMITTEE TARGETS COVID SPENDING — A congressional panel dedicated to a Trump administration effort to cut spending in the government is taking aim at Covid-19-era funds in its first hearing. The House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency will hold its first hearing on Feb. 12 titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud.” According to a notice from Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the hearing will examine improper payments and fraud, which the notice says were exacerbated during the Biden administration by “massively expanding Medicaid spending and rushing pandemic-era funding out the door without proper oversight mechanisms in place.” Why it matters: House Republicans and the new administration have criticized the Biden White House’s handling of Covid-19 and threatened retribution. Hearing witnesses include a former FBI agent who’s now part of The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank and director of an antiwelfare fraud organization.
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