U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune (R-SD) (R) speaks as Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) (L) listens during a news briefing after the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on July 22, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Democrats and the media are doing everything they can to slow the momentum of President Donald Trump by attacking the “One Big, Beautiful” law’s Medicaid provisions.
While Democrats want to weaken Medicaid by giving taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal immigrants and allowing able-bodied adults who don’t work to game the system, Republicans actually strengthened Medicaid by passing the One Big, Beautiful Bill into law.
Last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to the Senate floor to spread blatant lies about the Republican agenda. I immediately took to the Senate floor to set the record straight about how the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful” law strengthens Medicaid.
Here’s what I said:
I just heard the minority leader once again come to the United States Senate chamber and cry wolf. This time it’s about Medicaid reform.
Let’s be very clear: We need to strengthen Medicaid, and we did that in the bill that we just passed and was signed into law. But the minority leader once again puts fear above the facts.
He’s upset because Republicans are asking able-bodied adults to work if they want to receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits. He also is upset because Republicans think that illegal immigrants should not receive Medicaid benefits.
Let me set the record straight: Medicaid is for the vulnerable. It was never meant to cover able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to work. Nor was it meant to cover illegal immigrants, which the Democrats continue to embrace.
Today, there are more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants receiving Medicaid benefits. Today, there are 4.8 million able-bodied, working-age adults who refuse to work who are on Medicaid. That doesn’t strengthen Medicaid. It strains it. It weakens it. It makes it harder for the people who need Medicaid, those who Medicaid was designed for.
It also wastes taxpayer dollars.
Work requirements are common sense. They used to be bipartisan. Democrat President Bill Clinton signed that into law in the 1990s. Democrat President Obama defended it in 2008. Obama said work must be the “centerpiece of any social policy.”
Democrats today don’t believe that. They think Clinton was wrong. They think Obama was wrong. They’re for laziness, and they’re for illegal immigrants. The Democrats today are defending dependency, rather than independence. That’s what they’re doing today. That’s what Schumer did on the floor of the United States Senate.
Republicans believe in a safety net—a safety net to help people reach their full potential, to get back up on their feet. We believe in hard work. We believe in work as part of somebody’s identity—their dignity, their self-worth, how they view themselves, a role model for their children.
If you’re healthy and refuse to work, it’s a choice you may want to make. But don’t expect the taxpayers to pay for it. No child, no pregnant woman, or disabled person will lose coverage. But what the Democrats want to do is remove work requirements and continue to fund Medicaid for illegal immigrants. That’s just not fair to everyone else.
I came to the floor to talk about a different topic. But listening to the minority leader, I couldn’t help but talk about just how far to the left the Democrats have gone. So, it’s no surprise that they are at their lowest level ever in the polls.
The front page of The Wall Street Journal this weekend: Democrats at an all-time low in the history of polling in terms of people who identify with the Democratic Party and reject the Democratic Party. Only 1 in 3 accept what the Democrats are preaching. Sixty-three percent of the American people do not identify with that at all.
That’s no surprise, given the Democrats’ goals, including raising taxes and continuing to recruit more illegal immigrants to this nation.
John Barrasso is a four-term Republican senator from Wyoming and Senate Majority Whip.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By John Barrasso
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
That you for publishing what is difficult to find in the media.
The changes in made Medicaid are only common sense. But the Democrats lack ANY common sense. They are a bunch of immature crybabies who whine and reject any move President Trump makes. NOW the American people are waking up to the fact that most democrats are morons. Sad but true.
We must protect our Social benefits for only our tax paying citizen so they can be covered medical benefit! As describe in our Big Beautiful Bill!
there are still 1.2 million illegals on medicaid
when will these illegals be removed from medicaid?
I would have more confidence in Senator Barrasso’s arguments if the Medicaid changes in the BBB were effective today rather than after the 2026 mid-terms.
That said, he is also saying that it is more cost effective to withhold preventive medical care from certain people and wait until their medical problems require emergency room treatment and a possible hospital admission. That part I’m not buying.
If only the Trump haters would realize that the radical liberal DC Democrats lie every time they open their mouth, we would not have these kinds of issues. The radical liberal DC Democrats make sure to keep half of our population hating Republicans by keeping our deeply blue-biased media alive. I have no answer on how to stop that problem.
That’s all Democrats know how to do is lie. Why would anyone expect anything else
I always felt that at most a third of the country supports the Democrat’s agenda. Given how the Left tampers with their polling results I suspect it is more like only a fourth of the country actually does!
In defense of the integrity of Democrats and the Fake News medias, I’m here to honestly say that Democrats like Schumer, Pelosi, AOC and the Squad, Bernie Sanders, Pocahontas Warren, and HUNDREDS more DON’T LIE ALL THE TIME. No siree. OR ALL of the Fake News outlets (whether it’s printed or told)
IT’S ONLY WHEN THEIR LIPS ARE MOVING DO THEIR EVIL, DESPICABLE, VILE LIES START GUSHING OUT LIKE AN OPEN FIRE HYDRANT.
NEITHER DISGUSTING CORRUPT GROUP CAN EVER BE TRUSTED.