GOP Bill’s Militarized Funding Boost Could Instead Keep Millions on Medicaid

The over $150 billion allocated for boosting militarization in the U.S. in Republicans’ reconciliation bill could, instead, be used to keep millions of people enrolled in Medicaid and food assistance programs, a new report finds.

According to a report released Thursday by Public Citizen, the reconciliation bill proposes a boost of over $163 billion to militarized spending, including funds for the Pentagon and for the Department of Homeland Security’s mass deportation campaign. This would bring the Pentagon’s yearly budget to over $1 trillion and triple the budget for mass immigration detention, the report says.

Further, this funding boost alone could more than fund Medicaid for nearly 14 million people at risk of losing their health care coverage under the reconciliation bill, as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, for 11 million who may lose food assistance under the bill.

Shifting funding away from these lifesaving programs and instead allocating it to militarization is effectively “trading life for death,” the report says.

“This reconciliation package is a direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, report co-author and Program Director at the National Priorities Project, in a statement. “Protecting families from losing health care and going hungry is as simple as rejecting new spending on dangerous and unnecessary weapons and indiscriminate mass deportations.”

Republicans have been boasting that their sweeping, multi-trillion dollar bill, which takes a machete to crucial social programs, is aimed at reducing “waste” within the programs. But, as the report helps to demonstrate, the bill would actually serve as a major vehicle for Republicans to sap wealth from the poor and redistribute it to the rich, through tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and enrichment of the GOP’s corporate backers.

Indeed, part of the Pentagon funding boost is slated to be earmarked for President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” defense system — an idea that experts say is impossible to implement, but that could funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to private military contractors like SpaceX.

The report lays out the devastating impacts that Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and the child tax credit would have on a state-by-state basis. In numerous states, the militarization boosts could instead fund Medicaid, SNAP and the child tax credit for millions of people.

The report also highlights individual districts where Medicaid or SNAP benefits for thousands of people could be paid for just from funding for Trump’s “Golden Dome”; in Texas’s 21st district, which serves parts of San Antonio and Austin, Medicaid coverage for over 13,500 could continue to be funded with money instead earmarked for the military project.

The reconciliation bill passed the House 215 to 214 this week and now goes to the Senate, where it only needs to clear a simple majority vote to pass.

“If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors,” said Savannah Wooten, another co-author and People Over Pentagon Advocate for Public Citizen. “Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate non-starter for every member of Congress.”