Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) believes he has a commitment from the White House and Senate GOP leadership to get another chance to repeal an expansion of Medicaid offerings — a controversial proposal that failed to make it the final version of President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy package.
“I think I pretty well have a commitment. They’re going to do that,” Johnson told reporters of the prospects that Republicans will reconsider a provision that would end the federal government’s 90 percent cost share of funding for new enrollees in states that expanded Medicaid under the Democrats’ 2010 health care law.
Johnson added that he ended up voting for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” largely because he was given assurances of the proposed cuts, despite his significant concerns about the deficit projections under the bill.
“Another reason why I definitely had to vote ‘yes,’ I would have just dealt myself out of being involved in that process. And I wanted to be highly involved in that process,” said Johnson of the potential to include the Medicaid expansion cost-sharing cuts in a second party-line bill later this year. “That’s where I gained a fair amount of confidence from the White House, the President, our leadership, that we will have a second bite of the apple.”
The proposal to roll back the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion was floated by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) as an amendment to the GOP megabill. That amendment, which was co-sponsored by Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would have ended the 90 percent federal cost-share at the end of 2030. Afterwards, new enrollees would have seen their medical costs reimbursed by the federal government at rates as low as 50 percent.
Johnson, Crapo, Scott and other proponents of the amendment argued that states have gamed the system by leveraging artificial increases in Medicaid spending to draw in more federal funding. And according to estimates, the policy change would have cut spending by $313 billion — putting a major dent in the package’s overall price tag over which fiscal hawks fretted. The amendment never received a vote, however, amid fierce opposition from several moderates.
Despite Johnson’s insistence he has a promise on pursuing this proposal in the coming months, nothing is set in stone. Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House, meanwhile, continue to deny they made any side deals as a condition of winning over holdouts.
Scott said also in a brief interview Tuesday he had not been given any commitment from the White House to include his proposal in a second or third budget reconciliation package, adding that those conversations are “just starting.”
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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