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Trump admin takes steps to prevent illegal aliens from leeching off Social Security, welfare programs



President Donald Trump signed a memo Tuesday directing his administration to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving taxpayer funds from Social Security Act programs, including Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The initiative appears to be aimed both at eliminating the monetary incentive for foreign nationals to steal into the homeland and at pressuring the noncitizen net-takers already here to either wean off the dole or hit the road.

The memo directs the Social Security Administration to: expand its fraud prosecutor programs to at least 50 U.S. attorney offices; establish a Medicare and Medicaid fraud prosecution program in 15 U.S. attorney offices; investigate earning reports of individuals supposedly 100 years or older with mismatched records; consider reinstating its civil monetary penalty program; and reinforce program integrity measures so only those foreign nationals who satisfy all eligibility requirements can receive benefits.

'This literally blew us away.'

In a fact sheet detailing the memo, the White House echoed Elon Musk's recent revelation that over two million illegal aliens were apparently assigned Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2024 alone.

Venture capitalist Antonio Gracias, who has been working with the Department of Government Efficiency in scrutinizing the SSA, noted at the Wisconsin town hall where Musk highlighted the provision of Social Security numbers to illegal aliens, "This literally blew us away," reported NewsNation.

"We went there to find fraud, and we found this by accident," said Gracias.

Migrants authorized to legally work in the U.S. are eligible to apply for a Social Security Card — but in order to receive Supplemental Security Income, the Department of Homeland Security must class them as a migrant legally admitted and conferred permanent residency, a migrant granted conditional entry or asylum, or a migrant paroled into the country or admitted as a refugee.

Gracias suggested that in recent years, migrants were given SSNs automatically through the mail without an interview or showing identification.

The White House fact sheet notes that the multitudes of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. under the Biden administration are "siphoning dollars and essential services from American citizens while state and local budgets grow increasingly strained."

The Center for Immigration Studies revealed in a December 2023 report that 54% of households headed by immigrants, including naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal aliens, used one or more major welfare program.

'These taxpayer-funded benefits should be only for eligible taxpayers.'

The study indicated that 48% of "illegal-headed households" used food welfare programs; 39% relied on Medicaid; 18% relied on cash welfare; and 4% relied on housing programs.

The House Committee on Homeland Security noted in a November 2023 report that the cost in federal welfare for every one million parolees released into the U.S. under the Biden administration was likely in the neighborhood of $3 billion annually.

As of 2022, American taxpayers were shelling out at least $182 billion annually to provide services and benefits to illegal aliens and their dependents, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform report cited in the White House's fact sheet. FAIR indicated that net cost is $150.7 billion if the estimated $31 billion taxes illegal aliens cough up are factored.

The White House noted that the $182 billion figure includes $66.4 billion in federal expenses and $115.6 billion in state and local expenses. Again citing FAIR estimates, the White House noted that "a million illegal aliens hold stolen identifications or fraudulent SSNs" — abuse that has long been widespread.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday, "These taxpayer-funded benefits should be only for eligible taxpayers."

"President Biden should think about what he did in his last term, which is allow tens of millions of illegal people into our country, many of whom were fraudulently receiving these benefits."

The Social Security Administration indicated that Trump's memorandum "reinforces SSA's commitment to safeguarding taxpayer dollars and ensuring the integrity of the programs it administers."

"The Social Security Administration is dedicated to protecting the vital benefits that American workers have earned on behalf of themselves and their families," said acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek. "We are committed to working diligently to implement the President's memorandum and to ensure that benefits are paid only to those who should receive them."

Martin O'Malley, the SSA commissioner during Joe Biden's final year in office, told Government Executive, "This is all on brand for them, because they enjoy inflicting cruelty on people in the name of going after immigrants."

"If they go forward with this representative payee plan, they are talking about interrupting benefits that are legally owed to Americans and American-born children here in the U.S.," said O'Malley. "Just because someone might not have proof of their legal status on an SSA record doesn’t mean they aren’t the representative payee for a U.S. citizen, whether it be their husband with a disability, a mother-in-law, an American-born child."

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How Democrats use health care alarmism to cling to power



When the sky’s red at night, we’re in for mild weather. When Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, we’re in for six more weeks of winter. And when Democrats start losing, we’re in for a lot of fearmongering about health care.

Rep. Al Green’s (D-Texas) outburst during President Trump’s address to Congress last week was the latest example of Democratic health care alarmism. The Texas congressman waved his cane and shouted that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid before the sergeant-at-arms escorted him from the floor. The House later censured him for the disruption. Though Green is known for his dramatic antics, this was part of a well-established tradition.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference.

In 2017, Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, positioning them to fulfill their 2010 promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. The proposed American Health Care Act aimed to modify key aspects of the law while preserving others, but it ultimately failed in the Senate.

The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama, barred insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them higher premiums. While intended to protect vulnerable patients, the policy led to higher premiums for everyone, including those already struggling to afford health care.

Republicans proposed a different solution: letting the states place people with pre-existing conditions into “high-risk pools,” allowing insurers to charge them high premiums, and providing government subsidies to offset those costs. The chronically ill could access the care they needed without driving up costs for everyone.

More doom, more gloom

This all sounds fairly tame and technocratic, but if you watched Democrats’ campaign ads leading up to the 2018 midterms, you’d get the impression that Donald Trump and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Ohio) had personally executed every cancer-ridden grandma in the country. About half of the party’s ads that cycle focused on health care, especially the issue of pre-existing conditions.

And it worked. Democrats picked up 41 seats, ending Trump’s trifecta.

In 2022, Democrats were polling badly in the lead-up to that year’s midterms. Joe Biden was unpopular, the Afghanistan withdrawal had become a national embarrassment, and inflation was out of control. Right on cue, health care hysteria commenced.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) laid out an 11-point plan for that election cycle, which included a proposal that — in his words — “all federal legislation should sunset in five years” unless Congress repassed it. While this proposal probably wouldn’t have had much effect other than creating more work for Congress, Democrats saw their chance and pounced.

Then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) claimed Scott’s proposal would “end Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid.” The Democratic National Committee flooded the airwaves with the same alarmism.

That November, Democrats managed to hold down their losses in the House and even expanded their Senate majority. While it would be an overstatement to attribute their strong performance to health care alarmism alone, it certainly didn’t hurt.

History repeating?

Today, the Democrats find themselves in a similarly precarious situation. Republicans, once again, have a trifecta, and Trump is basking in the best approval ratings of his political career. Democrats have so far failed to marshal an effective resistance or even settle on a cohesive message — so they’re breaking out the old playbook.

Green’s theatrics about proposed Medicaid cuts attracted plenty of attention, but his fellow Democrats are starting to parrot the same talking points. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) recently warned that House Republicans’ plan “could take health care away from up to 25 million Americans.”

In reality, this is just more fearmongering. Advocates of socialized medicine like Wendell Potter, who quit his job as a Cigna executive to shill for single-payer health care, insist that expanding Medicaid is simply “the right thing to do.” Even though ironically, he also explained elsewhere how insurers turn Medicaid into their own personal piggy bank.

Sticking millions of more people on Medicaid — including illegal immigrants, if some Democrats have their way — hurts the very people it’s designed to help. Since Obama raised the eligibility threshold to 138% of the poverty line, the result has been overcrowding, provider shortages, and massive cost overruns.

It would be very convenient if lawmakers could fix American health care by throwing more money at it, but that’s simply not the case. Comprehensive reforms are needed to tackle systemic issues of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.

Republicans’ budget resolution is a good step in that direction, but they’ll need to work on their messaging to hold onto their House majority long enough to make a real difference. Otherwise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will ride a blue wave of health care alarmism straight to the speaker’s chair in 2026.

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‘Waste, fraud, and abuse’ hype masks the real issue: Entitlement bloat



It’s the oldest trick in Republicans' playbook: They campaign on cutting spending and shrinking government, but when it comes time to pass actual legislation, they increase spending instead. To distract from that reality, they point to “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Listen closely to all the hype about the DOGE — the Elon Musk-inspired, unofficial Department of Government Efficiency — and you’ll find nobody proposing to eliminate or structurally reform any major programs. Instead, leaders are giving Americans the impression that we can solve our inflation and debt crisis by trimming foreign aid, selling vacant buildings, and slashing overpayments in programs where waste and fraud are features, not bugs. This time must be different.

Cute messaging about egregious wasteful spending, which offends no corporate or individual constituency, will not solve the current crisis.

On the upside, an unprecedented conservative media campaign, led by Musk, has spotlighted wasteful spending and the need for cuts. On the downside, despite all the social media buzz, no one has presented a serious plan to reduce, eliminate, or restructure the key programs driving deficits and inflation. In fact, in December's budget bill, Musk and Donald Trump backed an additional $110 billion in deficit spending without using any so-called wasteful programs as offsets.

Recycling the idea of cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” — “no, really this time!” — might have worked before the $7 trillion COVID-19 debt bomb. But it won’t dent the $1.2 trillion in annual money printing needed to service the debt’s interest. Telling Americans we can achieve fiscal solvency simply by cutting painless waste, reducing foreign aid, or making government more “efficient” sets us up for failure.

The only way to curb inflation is to level with Americans about the real source of the problem: consensus spending by both parties, not the “waste, fraud, and abuse” they keep blaming. Either we cut those programs or accept inflation — no middle ground. The silver lining is that inflation’s bite has created a mandate to make a trade-off: We can end dependency on certain programs if we muster the political will.

We don’t need an AI tool or a latter-day Manhattan Project to figure out how to balance the budget. We already know what must be done; the challenge lies in devising the right messaging and political will to enact it.

The federal budget isn’t a mystery. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fiscal year 2025 will bring another $2 trillion deficit, with $7 trillion in spending and $5 trillion in revenue — and that’s before factoring in any expansion of Donald Trump’s first-term tax cuts. The CBO projects $1.1 trillion in interest on the debt, but those figures have repeatedly been revised upward.

The 10-year outlook appears even bleaker, especially once we factor in the CBO’s unrealistic revenue projections, its consistent underestimates of spending, and its failure to account for major catastrophes — such as COVID-19, the Great Recession, or annual weather disasters — that always push deficits beyond expectations. For example, while the CBO estimates the $7 trillion budget will only rise to $10.3 trillion by the end of the 10-year window, our spending has already doubled over the past decade, largely because of COVID-19.

What, then, drives our $7 trillion budget for fiscal 2025? Let’s break down the major government expenditures.

The “untouchables” of our budget make up the overwhelming majority of the tab. Social Security, Medicare, military, and veterans’ programs (both discretionary and mandatory), plus interest on the debt, total more than $5.2 trillion of the $7 trillion budget. Several hundred billion dollars of Medicare is offset by user premiums, bringing the net “untouchable” spending closer to $5 trillion. Yes, one could shave off some Pentagon waste and address Social Security and Medicare overpayments, but tightening eligibility would spark a political backlash that Trump may not want.

No hidden stockpile of “waste, fraud, and abuse” exists to eliminate. The only way to lower the deficit is to target the remaining $2 trillion, which includes discretionary spending and nonuniversal entitlement programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing.

Republicans will also need to devolve education, agriculture, transportation, and energy spending to the states. They must eliminate housing subsidies and mortgage giants like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. In other words, they must convince the American people that the choice is between dependency programs or permanent stagflation and unaffordability. Cute messaging about egregious wasteful spending, which offends no corporate or individual constituency, will not solve our current crisis. Honesty remains the only viable path forward.

Republicans should craft their reconciliation bill to fully repeal the Green New Deal and all climate regulations, reset discretionary spending to pre-COVID-19 levels, and enact welfare reform stronger than the 1996 measure. Some commentators falsely claim Social Security and Medicare are the only paths to reducing deficits, neglecting the many “other mandatory spending” programs that are not universal. Coupled with substantial health care reforms to lower consumer costs, this approach offers the only realistic way to address inflation.

Congress cannot focus solely on tax cuts this time. Yes, lawmakers should extend the 2017 tax cuts and add targeted cuts to spur small-business growth, but unlike in 2017, the primary emphasis should be on curbing government spending. A frank discussion about the true nature of these expenditures is essential to meet the mandate of lowering inflation at long last.

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