Proposed Trump Budget Slashes Medicaid, Food Stamps

The Hill reports:

President Trump will propose massive cuts to the Medicaid program for fiscal 2018, according to a budget document posted by the Department of Health and Human Services. In total, the budget proposes cutting Medicaid spending by $610 billion over 10 years. That’s on top of more than $800 billion in cuts called for under the House-passed ObamaCare repeal bill, the American Healthcare Act.

The HHS budget, which was posted online and then quickly deleted, also calls for changing how Medicaid is financed. The proposal would transition the joint federal-state program from a traditional entitlement to either a block grant or per-capita cap. It would also allow states to impose work requirements for certain Medicaid beneficiaries.

“This proposal will free States to advance solutions that best serve their unique populations — for example, encouraging work, promoting personal responsibility, and meeting the spectrum of diverse needs of their Medicaid populations,” the budget document said.

More from Quartz:



The new US budget the Trump administration plans to unveil is expected to propose trimming $193 billion over the next decade from the US Department of Agriculture’s “supplemental nutrition assistance program,” better known as food stamps.

That represents about 25% of the budget for the program, which supports 22.3 million low-income households, representing 45 million people. SNAP, as its known, no longer uses stamps; recipients are provided with electronic debit cards instead, pre-loaded with a monthly balance based on a calculation of income and household size.