The proposals put forth so far in the House bill to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program are not good enough, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, told "Wake Up America" that the current plan just "won't do it," as they "are talking about a work requirement, but not instituting it for four years."
The congressman explained "that's like a parent telling their child, 'look you gotta get out of the basement and get a job, but you have four years to do it.' The bottom line, that doesn't work."
"We don't get to the heart of the matter, which is that we are paying more for able bodied people on Medicaid than we pay for the disabled, the pregnant, the elderly and small children, and it is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year," he said.
A solution can be found, Harris added, insisting "as long as we don't increase the deficits, we are willing to talk about anything. The problem is that this bill as it is currently structured would increase the federal deficit for the first few years of the next 10."
"We can't have that," he said, categorically rejecting that. "We shave a fiscal crisis. We have to make sure that we're not increasing the federal deficit in any of the years.
"What they have done is they have put all the savings at the end of the 10 years and all of the expenses at the beginning. This is typical Washington. This is way The Swamp works."
"It won't work anymore. We can't do that. Our federal debt is too high. Our federal deficits are too high."
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Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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