Speaker Johnson’s Lies Become More Absurd As He Defends Medicaid Cuts

During an appearance on Meet The Press this past weekend, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told a new lie about how the budget bill won’t actually kick anyone off of Medicaid. This time, Johnson said that only the people who CHOOSE to lose their coverage are going to lose it because of the work requirements. But this claim flies in the face of reality, as the bill specifically directs the House to cut over $800 billion from Medicaid, and that can’t be done without removing people from the rolls. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

In their efforts to continuously lie to the American public and convince them that their cruel and disgusting budget bill is actually neither of those things. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson went on Meet the Press this past weekend where he said that the only people that are gonna lose their Medicaid coverage are those people who choose to lose it by not getting a job. Because as Johnson told us this past weekend as well as last week, the only way you can find value as a human being is if you're giving up your time and labor to another person. If you don't do that, then you have no value. You have no self-worth in Mike Johnson's eyes. But here is the latest lie that Johnson is spinning in order to convince people that no, nobody's getting kicked off Medicaid, even though they absolutely are. Here's what Johnson said.

Those 4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so. You're telling me that you're going to require the able bodied, these young men, for example, okay, to only work or volunteer in their community for 20 hours a week, and that's too cumbersome for them. I'm not buying it. The American people are not buying it. When people work, when able-bodied young men work, it's good for them, for their dignity, their purpose, and it's good for the community. If you can't find a job, then volunteer in your community for 20 hours and you will meet the requirement.

Now, here's the thing. Mike Johnson actually makes it sound like, okay, yeah, actually that makes sense, right? Unfortunately, the numbers do not, in fact, bear that out. The vast majority of people that are receiving Medicaid benefits do in fact work of the able-bodied people able to work. More than 90% of them do work. Another 6% on top of that have been unable to find work. And another good percentage of that are people who are actually retired. So only about 6% of people on Medicaid are not able to work because they cannot find work. But Faron 20 hours, right? All you can do is volunteer in your community for 20 hours. First of all, it's not 20 hours, it's 80 hours, it's 20 hours a week, 80 hours a month. So it is essentially a full-time job for people. Uh, part-time job, I guess. But it, it, it's happening for people who are currently looking for jobs. If you're spending five hours a day volunteering in the community, which absolutely is a noble, honorable thing to do, um, that's five hours that you can't look for a job. You know, like that's, that's a little difficult. But at the same

Time, if you have a community where you have 5,000 people who suddenly need to get 20 hours per week in community service, not every community needs 5,000 or a thousand or even a hundred people volunteering 20 hours a week, there may not be enough to do it. So those people, even though they want to, even though they try to, would still be kicked off. But none of that matters because all of it's. The reality is that this bill instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which for some reason controls the budget for Medicaid to cut $800 billion outta Medicaid over the next 10 years. And you can't cut 880 billion is actually the number over 10 years if you don't kick people off. So Mike Johnson could come up with all these flowery, you know, oh, this sounds like a good idea on paper type things. None of it's real because they're gonna make the cuts anyway.