Established in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Medicaid serves to aid the low-income households of America, offering personal care services and covering most medical fees for those it applies to. Later on in 2010, the program’s eligibility criteria expanded under the Affordable Care Act and President Obama. Now it appears that Medicaid will face significant cuts with Trump’s new plans.
In late March, Trump proposed a “big, beautiful bill” to greenlight, among other things, the Republicans’ gutting of Medicaid. An estimated $880 billion over the next ten years will be cut as the bill currently stands, amounting to around a 29% cut of Medicaid’s current budget allocation.
Americans share concerns about how the government plans to use their money after such costly cuts. “It must be discussed where the funds will be allocated. If funds are going to places that improve society, a better moral argument can be formed,” senior Grant Yuska said.
The cuts serve as a small step in an ongoing campaign to decrease the gross national debt, along with the tariffs President Trump set on foreign goods. The idea being that by lowering the national debt, the economy will grow. Less money will need to be reallocated to the debt crisis and will instead be partitioned elsewhere.
But how effective will this be in growing the economy? As of April 2025, gross national debt stands at $36.22 trillion. While a figure of $880 billion might seem impressive, that grandeur is misplaced. Looking back, April 2015 saw a gross national debt of $18.2 trillion, almost doubling in a decade.
Considering how much the national debt can pile up in ten years, it doesn’t seem justifiable to make petty cuts in an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem. Stripping money from the impoverished isn’t the solution.
Those in support of cuts see the situation with several potential caveats. “Although cutting unnecessary spending is good in theory, the implications of simply cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in one sweep must be well thought out first,” said senior Bennett Teitle.
In exchange for a thriving economy, these cuts harm the impoverished and pry government support from their hands. There’s also the issue of how sudden a change would impact someone already in a hopeless situation.
The motivations of fund reallocation are also considered. “If funds are siphoned into programs for privatized, personal or individual state/area needs, there is little to argue over,” Yuska continued. “People in power are moving money away from the vulnerable to fund their own interests.”
As President Trump continues to rewrite the nation’s economy, many are beginning to see through the man claiming to be for the people. Time and time again, even this early in his presidency, the president has made several questionable economic decisions, and affected Americans are trying to figure out why.
