By Jacob Bogage and Abha Bhattarai
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ mammoth tax and immigration bill would add so much to the national debt that it could force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare beginning in 2026, Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper reported late Tuesday.
Trump and the GOP’s budget reconciliation package — officially titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — would add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office projected, forcing budget officials to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.
When legislation significantly adds to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers “sequestration,” or compulsory budgetary reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4 percent annually, or $490 billion over 10 years, the CBO reported in response to a request from Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.
“Having Medicare cuts suddenly enter the discussion has struck a lot of people by surprise,” said Timothy D. McBride, a health economist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Taking out 4 percent of the Medicare budget might not sound like much, but everything hurts at this point.”
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