FIVE-ALARM FIRE: The House Freedom Caucus’ Extreme Budget Proposal Hurts Seniors

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus has made their priorities clear: imposing devastating cuts that would hurt seniors and increasing costs for working- and middle-class families, all to protect and extend tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. In fact, their tax cuts would be so expensive that their deep and harmful cuts would not reduce the deficit.

That’s in sharp contrast with the President’s Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.

Combined with other commitments extreme MAGA House Republicans have already made, the extreme Freedom Caucus proposal will be a disaster for families in at least five key ways: endangering public safety, raising costs for families, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining American workers, weakening national security, and hurting seniors.

Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that Congressional Republicans’ budget math doesn’t add up. CBO found that—in order to meet Congressional Republicans’ stated commitment to balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes on the wealthy or corporations, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and some veterans’ benefits— Congressional Republicans would need to eliminate everything in the rest of the Federal budget.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal will be a five-alarm fire for families—including by hurting seniors. As the President has made clear, if extreme MAGA Republicans in the House try to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, he will stop them—and his Budget protects these bedrock programs while investing in the health and well-being of America’s seniors.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposals will: 

• Make the Largest Medicare Benefit Cut in Decades. Extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have signed onto a bill to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. That will eliminate access to $35 insulin for more than 3 million Medicare beneficiaries, eliminate the $2,000 out of pocket cap on prescription drugs for seniors, increase prices of prescription drugs for seniors, and eliminate free vaccines that are saving 3.4 million seniors on average $70 per year—all to give Big Pharma a bigger taxpayer handout.
• Worsen Social Security and Medicare Wait Times. Under the extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal, people applying for disability benefits would have to wait at least two months longer for a decision. With fewer staff available, seniors would also be forced to endure longer wait times when they call for assistance for both Social Security and Medicare, and as many as 240 Social Security field offices could be forced to close or shorten the hours they are open to the public.
• Rob Seniors of Healthy Meals. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would take away nutrition services, such as Meals on Wheels, for more than 1 million seniors. For many of these seniors, these programs provide the only healthy meal they receive on any given day.
• Cuts Housing for Seniors. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would eliminate funding for Housing Choice Vouchers for as many as 100,000 households headed by seniors, putting seniors across the country at greater risk of homelessness.

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