Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, and—much like his embarrassing testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee the day before—it was rough.
“Why is the national debt so very important that you’re trying to kick 16 million people off their health insurance, but increasing the national debt doesn’t seem to matter if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires and billionaire corporations?” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts asked Bessent, who dodged the question by trying to parse the number of people losing Medicaid.
“So you don’t want to answer the question,” Warren responded.
Bessent then claimed that the proposed budget cuts to Medicaid targeted millions of “illegal aliens” who are receiving benefits, which is false. While certain groups, including children of immigrants, are eligible to receive Medicaid, undocumented immigrants are not.
“Medicaid is not used for people who are not documented,” Warren shot back, turning her attention to the committee chair to highlight the ethics behind Bessent’s approach to addressing the national deficit.
“I just want to say here, the part that troubles me the most is that the secretary is deeply worried about the deficit and is willing to knock 16 million, or, he says, ‘merely 11 million people’ off their health care, matters so much. But it doesn’t matter so much if you’re cutting taxes for billionaires. Then it’s okay to run up a big deficit. I think that’s wrong,” she said.
Warren’s question cuts to the heart of the issue: The GOP shows very little concern for the national deficit when it comes to funneling money to the wealthiest tax brackets. President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” which most estimates show would add trillions of dollars to the national deficit over the next decade, makes that clear.
So while some Republicans are making a show of their concerns about the debt created by their own legislation, their primary concern seems to be that not enough people will be stripped of Medicaid and other essential programs to offset tax breaks for the rich.