White House Says Federal Government Can’t Afford to Keep Funding Medicare and Medicaid: “You Can’t Do It”

The video lasted only minutes before the White House quietly took it down. In it, President Trump told a private Easter luncheon crowd something no sitting president typically admits out loud: the federal government cannot afford Medicare and Medicaid. “Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things … You can’t do it,” Trump said, according to footage briefly posted on the White House’s own YouTube account before it disappeared.

The remarks came during a private lunch closed to reporters, delivered as Trump explained his reasoning to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” Trump said, extending the argument beyond child care into the nation’s two largest health insurance programs, covering more than 140 million Americans combined.

He didn’t stop with health care programs. Trump argued that day care costs should fall to individual states rather than the federal government, telling the room, “You’ve got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.” He dismissed certain federal programs as “little scams” that states should handle instead, framing years of federal involvement as overreach needing correction.

This article was created with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and clarity.

Pentagon Requests $200 Billion More as Republicans Weigh Health Cuts

Trump’s comments landed at a politically awkward moment. Hours earlier, he had discussed the U.S.-led military campaign against Iran, and the Pentagon was separately requesting an additional $200 billion to help cover the cost of that conflict. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, were already weighing cuts to federal health spending, raising the prospect that Medicaid dollars could shrink just as war funding grows.

Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle wasted no time responding. “Now, Republicans in Washington want to rip health care away from even more people to fund Trump’s reckless war in the Middle East,” he wrote on social media platform X. “It’s shameful,” he added. Boyle’s warning centered on proposed federal spending changes that could leave millions of additional Americans without health coverage if lawmakers moved forward with cuts to Medicaid.

Senator Elizabeth Warren offered a pointed counterpoint. “Imagine if instead of funding forever wars in the Middle East, the United States delivered universal child care and health care for all Americans,” she wrote on X. The White House pushed back on the criticism entirely, with a spokesperson insisting Trump was only targeting fraud within these programs, not questioning whether Medicare and Medicaid deserved federal funding at all.

CBO Projects 11.8 Million Americans Could Lose Health Coverage

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that recent federal cuts will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage tied to Medicaid, with another 3.1 million losing coverage through Affordable Care Act marketplace plans. Those figures stem from legislation Trump signed last year, cutting federal Medicaid funding by roughly 15%, or nearly $1 trillion, over the next decade.

Medicaid alone covers more than 70 million low-income Americans, including children, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities. Medicare covers roughly 65 million older adults and people with certain disabilities. Trump’s suggestion that states absorb these costs raises an immediate question: many states already operate with tight budgets, and shifting billions of dollars in health spending onto them could force difficult choices about who gets covered and who doesn’t.

Trump’s remarks also came against the backdrop of his broader budget priorities. He has asked Congress to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion, among the largest such requests in decades, while proposing to cut nondefense spending by 10% and shift some responsibilities to state and local governments. About two-thirds of the nation’s roughly $7 trillion in annual spending already goes toward Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security combined.

Americans Oppose War Spending Trade-offs by Wide Margins in New Polls

Polling suggests most Americans are uneasy with these tradeoffs. A CNN survey found 71% of respondents opposed the Pentagon’s proposed $200 billion request tied to the Iran conflict, with even 4 in 10 Republicans against it. A separate CBS News-YouGov poll found 67% of Americans, and 36% of Republicans, said they should not have to pay more at the pump to help fund the war.

None of that public resistance changed the administration’s framing. Trump’s position remains that Washington should focus solely on “military protection” while states take on responsibility for health coverage and child care. For the tens of millions of Americans currently enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare, that shift would mean navigating a patchwork of state-level rules, funding levels and eligibility standards instead of a single federal system.

Trump has said plainly what many in Washington avoid saying aloud: that funding two massive health programs and an active military campaign at once is, in his words, something the federal government “can’t do.” Whether Congress accepts that framing or rejects it, the choice he described, guns over guaranteed health coverage, is now part of the official record, preserved in a leaked video the White House tried to erase.