Republicans Block Whitehouse Resolution to Protect Medicare from Back-Door Cuts Buried in Trump’s Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires Law

Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, took to the Senate floor this afternoon to request unanimous consent to pass his resolution to protect Medicare from automatic cuts slated to result from Republicans' Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires law. A Republican senator blocked the measure.

"Republicans' Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill included many dirty tricks tucked in there to hurt people and make billionaires wealthier and happier and freer to pollute. Of all the dirty tricks in that bill, perhaps the trickiest was the one that was so hidden that it wasn't even mentioned in the bill, and that is about a half trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare," Whitehouse said on the floor. "I want to put everybody on record that we need to undo the looming half trillion dollar cut to Medicare before it starts to hit families in Rhode Island and elsewhere around the country."

In July, President Trump and Congressional Republicans jammed through their Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill, which cuts almost a trillion dollars from Medicaid and raises health insurance costs, all to bankroll tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.

The new law also included a hidden cut to Medicare, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed to Whitehouse in a letter last month. By adding $4.1 trillion to the national debt, the legislation automatically triggers the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Act, which will impose $536 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare over the next decade unless Congress takes bipartisan action.

The CBO letter explains that the Republicans' Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires Law will increase deficits relative to the January 2025 baseline by $2.1 trillion through 2029 and by $3.4 trillion through 2034. The law's addition to the deficit triggers the sequestration process under the Statutory PAYGO Act.

CBO estimates that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be required to issue a sequestration order to reduce spending by a total of $415 billion in fiscal year 2026, including a four percent sequestration cut to Medicare, which is expected to cut $45 billion in 2026 and total of $536 billion over nine years. Republicans could pass legislation waiving the PAYGO requirements, but did not include such a measure in the Big,Beautiful-for-Billionaires Law.

As Congressional Republicans make budget-busting giveaways for their billionaire campaign donors, Whitehouse is pushing to make the tax code fair and protect the programs seniors rely on. Whitehouse is working to pass his legislation to protect the solvency of Medicare and Social Security as far as the eye can see simply by having the nation's highest earners start contributing their fair share.

Video of Senator Whitehouse's floor remarks is available here.