Medicaid cuts jeopardize the right to age at home

April 17, 2025April 15, 2025 healthcare, News, Opinion

If you or someone you love wants to age at home — and nearly 90 percent of older Americans do — there’s a number you should know: $2.3 trillion.

That’s how much could be cut from Medicaid under current budget proposals. And while headlines often focus on how these cuts would affect nursing homes, what’s less understood but equally devastating is what they would mean for home-based care.

These cuts would strike at the heart of the support system that allows millions ...

Medicaid cuts jeopardize the right to age at home

April 17, 2025April 15, 2025 healthcare, News, Opinion

If you or someone you love wants to age at home — and nearly 90 percent of older Americans do — there’s a number you should know: $2.3 trillion.

That’s how much could be cut from Medicaid under current budget proposals. And while headlines often focus on how these cuts would affect nursing homes, what’s less understood but equally devastating is what they would mean for home-based care.

These cuts would strike at the heart of the support system that allows millions ...

Trump’s right that the system is rigged, but he’s not helping

April 10, 2025April 10, 2025 congress, Donald Trump, healthcare, medicaid, Medicare, News, Opinion

I’m a Black woman with a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology, spent 10 years working for Congress. I now work for a philanthropy that believes diversity, equity and inclusion are among this nation’s greatest strengths.

So President Trump and I don’t have much in common, except for two things. First, we’re both from Queens, so we’re not afraid to say what’s on our minds. Second, we both agree that the government as it’s currently constructed isn’t working for everybody.

The Hill

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Trump is disrupting everything — why isn’t Congress doing anything?

April 7, 2025April 7, 2025 News, Opinion

Much of what we know about President Trump's leadership is revealed by his personal behavior. For example, during his first month in office, while Elon Musk conducted mass firings and canceled government services to cut spending, Trump spent nearly $10.7 million of taxpayer money to play golf at his properties.

The Department of Government Efficiency hasn't mentioned this. HuffPost calculated the expenditure based on Trump's tax-supported golf outings during his...

A ‘current policy’ budget baseline would have disastrous consequences

April 2, 2025April 2, 2025 Congressional Budget Office, News, Opinion

Some Republicans in Congress have proposed changing the budget reconciliation process to begin using a “current policy” baseline that ignores expirations under law, instead of the traditional “current law” baseline.

This would be a serious act of fiscal irresponsibility, making it easier for either party to circumvent important budgetary guardrails, thereby accelerating the growth of our national debt by many trillions for years to come.

The Hill

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The White House’s mixed message on its tariff policy

April 1, 2025April 1, 2025 Donald Trump, NAFTA, News, Opinion

The laws of economics can be frustratingly inconvenient, especially in Washington. To many lawmakers, the fundamental principles of economics are neither fundamental nor even principles: They are tools to be bent, warped, and manipulated or outright ignored in order to yield up the answers those lawmakers want.

So it is that Democrats love to argue that raising taxes on things automatically yields more tax revenue for the government. They would have you believe that...

Cutting Medicaid would force even more hospitals to close

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 healthcare, News, Opinion

How much austerity can our hospitals take? It’s a frightening question — and Congress is threatening to find out the answer.

America’s health care infrastructure is shrinking. Since 2018, more than 100 hospitals have closed across the U.S. When hospitals close, doctor visits go down, death rates go up and job losses are severe.

Now, Republicans in Congress are threatening to slash the Medicaid budget, which would strip even more hospitals of desperately needed fundin...

Trump and Musk are targeting Social Security, and you should worry

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 News, Opinion

The most tone-deaf moment in recent politics arrived last week. In a podcast interview, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — worth over $1 billion — said of old people on Social Security, “If Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month, my 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t complain. She’d think something got messed up and she’d get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming and yelling. Anybody who knows payments knows you stop th...

Congress must stop Biden’s VA mortgage bailout — before it’s too late

March 29, 2025March 28, 2025 News, Opinion

We are now witnessing an outcry from Democrats, loan servicers and the media over the prospect of Congress scaling back the Department of Veterans Affairs's new mortgage bailout program, the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program. If the program is curtailed as proposed by Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.), they warn, tens of thousands of veterans — perhaps as many as 80,000 — will lose their homes.

But the reality is quite different and far more dangerous. Left unc...

Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court election is a referendum on Trump

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 News, Opinion

On Apr. 1, Wisconsin voters will elect a new state Supreme Court justice. Normally, such news would be met with a yawn, but not this year — the campaign has already made national news and drawn the attention of people from around the country

The Wisconsin election could be one of American history's most important judicial elections, and one of the most expensive. And, as has been the trend in recent decades in America, this one has turned nasty, full of what one spokesman ter...