The GOP’s Budget Proposal Would Cut Medicaid. Most Oppose That Idea, Poll Finds.

New polling shows strong support for increasing Medicaid funding or keeping it at current levels — despite Republicans recently introducing legislation that would make steep cuts to the program.

A KFF poll published late last week finds that 40 percent of Americans believe Medicaid spending should be kept where it’s at right now. Just 17 percent believe such funding should be reduced, while a plurality of respondents, 42 percent, believe it should be increased.

That latter number is the highest rate of respondents calling for spending levels for the program to be increased since KFF started asking the question nearly two decades ago.

Among the 17 percent who want funding cut, only half said they wanted it decreased by “a lot,” with a near-equal number saying they only wanted “a little” decrease in funding.

There was bipartisan support over whether spending should be increased or kept the same, with 95 percent of Democratic-leaning voters saying as much, and two-thirds of Republican-leaning voters (67 percent) saying so, too, the poll found.

Nearly all respondents — 97 percent — said Medicaid is important for people in their own communities. More than half — 56 percent — said the program was important for themselves and their family members.

Such numbers indicate strong support for ensuring the program stays at the same spending levels or higher. Indeed, previous polling shows that three-quarters of Americans have a favorable view of Medicaid — yet, members of the Trump administration, including Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have falsely claimed that most Americans have an unfavorable view of the program.

The latest KFF poll was published as Republican lawmakers in Congress appear intent on making major spending cuts to the program. While President Donald Trump has maintained that he will not make such cuts, a budget bill in Congress supported by Trump will undoubtedly reduce Medicaid spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.

A recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analysis of the GOP bill finds that those cuts will “result in widespread harm,” and could take away benefits from “more than 9 million low-income people in an average month.”

Despite the clear threat of Medicaid cuts, Republicans continue to falsely insist that the program will remain untouched. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that these claims are highly misleading, as the budget bill requires massive spending reductions over the next decade from the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction — which includes Medicaid.

“This analysis from the nonpartisan CBO confirms what we’ve been saying all along: Republicans are lying about their budget,” House Budget Committee Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) recently stated. “Their plan would force the largest Medicaid cuts in American history — all to pay for more tax giveaways to billionaires.”