Deluzio skewers Medicaid cuts as Dems seek winning message on Trump megabill

With cuts to Medicaid and food stamps now law, Democrats are looking to minimize their impact and punish Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections for what they frame as an attack on vulnerable people.

“I’m going to do everything I can between now and 2026 to remind voters, Democrat and Republican, what those folks in Washington just did,” said U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel.

He was joined Thursday outside a Harmar nursing home by state lawmakers Rep. Mandy Steele, D-Fox Chapel, and Sen. Lindsey Williams, D-West View, for a press conference skewering the massive budget bill signed Friday by President Donald Trump.

The law contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, including temporary relief for many lower- and middle-income families, but also generous breaks for the wealthy.

To help offset this, Republicans added work requirements for many adults enrolled in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, while also lowering federal payouts to hospitals, long-term care facilities and other health care providers for treating Medicaid patients.

Democrats have especially focused on the Medicaid work requirements set to take effect at the end of 2026 that Republicans say will root out waste and abuse.

Medicaid benefits are paid to hospitals to cover a patient’s care, meaning they can’t be used to pad an individual’s bank account, but there are limited instances of fraud.

Able-bodied, childless adults who want Medicaid coverage will have to prove they worked, volunteered or attended school for 80 hours a month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts at least 17 million people, including 483,000 Pennsylvanians, will lose health care coverage. Experts say — and Democrats have often echoed — that many of those people will be eligible beneficiaries who get bogged down in bureaucratic morass.

“This is designed to make things intentionally difficult for Medicaid recipients who are already struggling with limited resources,” Steele said.

Responding to Democratic criticism, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz said in a statement Thursday his agency is “committed to ensuring Medicaid remains a lifeline for the truly vulnerable while supporting pathways to independence for able-bodied Americans who can work.”

Neither U.S. Sen Dave McCormick nor U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, immediately returned requests for comment.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, addressed questions by pointing to a recent TribLive op-ed penned by the congressman. Within it, he argued the Medicaid cuts secure the program’s future by trimming the rolls of able-bodied people and preserving access for low-income pregnant women, children, seniors and those with disabilities.

It will be up to states to find the funds and manpower to administer the rules.

Williams, relaying a conversation with Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Valerie Arkoosh, said it will cost the state millions of dollars to set up this infrastructure. The aim is to do eligibility checks as efficiently as possible to minimize people slipping through the cracks.

She warned, though, that “getting extra millions to fix what Republicans did in D.C. is going to be a challenge.”

Locked out of federal power, Democrats are hoping their criticism of Trump’s bill resonates with people like Denise Siters, a Beaver Falls resident who is a full-time caregiver for her son and said she voted for then-candidate Donald Trump in November.

“These Medicaid cuts are not what I voted for,” she said, reading from prepared remarks. “We voted for a better quality of life and economy for working class Americans, and these cuts are the ultimate betrayal.”