Congressional GOP’s Latest Brilliant Idea: Cutting Healthcare to Pay for the Iran War

Wake up, babe–new GOP plan to lose the midterm elections by tying healthcare cuts to the Iran War just dropped.

You do have to wonder sometimes how members of the Congressional GOP manage to hit upon ideas like the one above, other than the thought of cutting healthcare to be able to afford the ongoing war in Iran being a spark of infernal inspiration provided directly by their diabolical master in The Pit. You also have to wonder how Republicans have ever managed to win a modern election, when this is the kind of thing they think is a good idea: Stripping desperately needed elements of the social safety net in order to support a deeply unpopular war, right before a vote that is a referendum on their actions. And the war is indeed widely unpopular, if you were wondering: Although support for it augurs precisely to Trump’s own, quickly declining approval, that means it’s currently sitting around 39% in support and dropping. And keep in mind, we’re still in the early wartime period that is supposed to artificially boost the popularity of the conflict—instead, Americans are already treating this as if we’ve been at war with Iran for a year.

So naturally, that’s the perfect time for Republican members of Congress to begin rumbling about how healthcare cuts could be used to offset the grotesque $200 billion (more than the entire U.S. cost of the Ukraine war in four years) that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is now saying that the Iran War will require. Speaking to Axios, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (LA) said that they would be seeking to identify and eliminate “areas of fraud and waste and abuse,” invoking the magical “fraud” word that the party has realized will make its supporters happily surrender all of their rights and privileges as long as they think it might hurt some of the other people they don’t like. Donald Trump’s administration is already withholding federal funding from a bevy of exclusively blue states on the ground of vague “fraud” accusations that they haven’t bothered to actually enumerate. And lest we forget, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” already mandates the cutting of more than $1 trillion in Medicaid coverage over the next decade, which has been estimated to result in the loss of healthcare for more than 10 million Americans.

What could we do with the $12B Trump spent on the first week of war with Iran?

– Housing help for ~1 million Americans
– Lower prescription drug costs
– Fund national parks for 3+ years
– Give Pell grants to 1.6 million students
– Pay the salaries of 100,000+ teachers and nurses

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) Mar 28, 2026 at 5:42 PM

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (TX), meanwhile, is apparently shepherding the next phase of prospective GOP healthcare slashing, which could have its eyes on the perennial sacred cow of Medicare. According to Axios, he apparently backs a plan to revamp the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing reductions plan, cutting the subsidy amounts that some enrollees are receiving to both save the government money–all the better to redirect toward missiles to fire at elementary schools–while resulting in more uninsured Americans at the same time. There’s no legislative language for these prospective cuts that has yet been drafted, but Arrington said he wanted to get something passed into law within “60 to 90 days,” demonstrating the speed with which the Trump administration no doubt wants to see movement here.

Nearly 80% of Americans oppose Congressional meddling or outright cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. But who cares about the overwhelming will of the people, when you’ve got rationales from the likes of Hegseth, who when asked why the DOD needed $200 billion for the Iran War, an amount implying years of conflict in the region, simply replied: “Obviously, it takes money to kill bad guys.” Don’t worry, though, the $200 billion figure is only an estimate at the end of the day–as Hegseth himself observed, “I think that number could move.” Surely, he’s probably implying that the number could eventually move downward, right? Right?

I’ll just leave you with an evergreen meme, should you have any need for it.