A Republican representative made an awkward gaffe on Fox News when discussing the Trump administration’s plans for Medicaid.
“And then you can look at Medicaid cuts,” Missouri lawmaker and Congress tax chief Jason Smith said, before hastily correcting himself. “Uh, Medicaid reforms, I should say.”
Smith, the current chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is a strong supporter of President Donald Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” and has been pushing for the president’s proposed budget measures in Congress.
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“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill puts American families first,” he wrote on X Thursday.
But Smith accidentally said the quiet part out loud when he appeared on The Will Cain Show on Fox on Thursday.
Smith also directly contradicted his state’s Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who wrote a scathing New York Times op-ed this week slamming the White House for threatening to slash Medicaid, a move that he called “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
Speaker Mike Johnson has had his hands full managing intra-party fighting as two warring factions have emerged—far-right Republicans calling for steep cuts, and moderate Republicans who have raised concerns about cutting off support to poor, working-class Americans.
The president previously claimed that he wouldn’t damage Medicaid, saying: “One of the things that’s very important will be saving Medicaid for Americans in need. We will be saving Medicaid and strengthening it.”
But Republicans announced the new legislation this week, which could sever millions of Americans’ critical and only connection to health care. If it takes effect, more than 8.5 million people across the country would lose health insurance.
The so-called “reforms” have prompted dissent from across the political spectrum, with Hawley adding that 80 percent of Americans oppose significant cuts to Medicaid.
“Republicans need to open their eyes: Our voters support social insurance programs,” he wrote. “More than that, our voters depend on those programs… our economy is increasingly unfriendly to working people and their families.”
