Why Are They Eliminating Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security?

Just a couple of weeks ago, Sam Graves voted in favor of the House spending bill, which supports a ‘concept of a plan’ poised to cut Medicaid. We know Medicaid here in Missouri as MO HealthNet, and about 1.3 million Missourians use it for their medical care. Of that 1.3 million people, almost half are children, and a large portion of the rest are the elderly and people with disabilities. A lot of nursing homes depend on Medicaid to fund their care, rural hospitals could close, people would lose their jobs, and access to life-saving healthcare.

So why would our representative vote for it?

The only reason I can see is to line the pockets of the special interests controlling the career politicians in Washington.

We obviously need new representation in Washington for the 6th District who will fight to provide life-saving healthcare to people in Missouri, especially rural people, where access is most limited.

Also, I have news for Sam Graves: the ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ the Federal DOGE team has allegedly uncovered was created on your watch! Where on earth did all of these laws come from with the wild spending? I have been patiently waiting for actual fraud rather than just policy disagreements, but maybe someday they will produce evidence. Any wasting of money comes from career politicians like Graves crafting the legislation in the first place. This is on you, buddy.

Social security cuts are up next for Graves and his colleagues. Even now, the Social Security Administration is being forced to fire 7,000 employees in an early ominous sign indicating cuts are likely to come. I am 35 years old, and I have been paying into Social Security since my first job at McDonald’s at 15. From what I read and people say, my generation can assume Social Security will run out of money and we will likely never see what we have been paying in all this time.

How can this be?

Sure, Social Security is an expensive program, but it also provides a necessary social safety net that helps care for people when they are retirement age. Not everyone has a hefty stock retirement portfolio they can easily monetize and pay for retirement, so Social Security was created to help those who needed to retire but may not have the financial means to do so. To cut programs such as Medicaid, possibly Medicare, and Social Security is to do a horrific disservice to the tens of millions of Americans who have paid into the system our whole working lives, especially when Congress is simultaneously lavishing tax benefits on the wealthiest among us.

America needs a new generation of leadership now, a new generation that will have to live with the decisions and impacts of legislation with the intention of continuing to improve our democracy for our children rather than pulling the rug out from under social safety programs on the way out the door.