THIS YEAR, REPUBLICAN House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed through a budget resolution that calls for cutting at least $880 billion over 10 years from funding that includes Medicaid. A number of Republicans see these cuts as damaging to voters in their districts. Johnson’s job, however, is to advance the budget set forth by the Trump administration — a budget aimed at increasing spending on border security and deportations while also extending the tax cuts from the first Trump administration.
Those 2017 tax cuts saved households with incomes in the top 1% and the top 5% three times more than they did for those with incomes in the bottom 60%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Trump administration wants Medicaid to foot the bill, effectively stealing money from disabled children to give tax cuts to billionaires.
Medicaid is widely popular, but we can get so caught up in rhetoric and budget numbers that we fail to understand it. Broadly known as a joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, Medicaid also covers services for 47% of all disabled children in the United States. My daughter Zoe is one of them.
So is Mia, daughter of Adam and Joy Beth Crownover, who gave me permission to tell their story. Mia was born with lissencephaly, a condition in which the brain is smooth where it should be wrinkled. Many babies like Mia don’t live past their second birthday, but Mia is already 2.
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