At a private Easter luncheon at the White House April 1, President Donald Trump said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that those costs should be passed off to the states, which have no funds for that. This constitutes a tremendous attack on some of the core functions of the U.S. government, which exist because they were passed federally, and Trump has no authority to eliminate them, though legality has not prevented Trump from running roughshod in the past.
Trump announced at the luncheon that he decided upon this following discussion with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought. Vought is one of the leading representatives of the fascist Mont Pelerin Society-led Heritage Foundation, having served as vice president of Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, from 2010 to 2017. Vought was also one of the lead authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. In 2018, during his first administration, Trump made Vought head of the OMB which, under Trump, is one of the most powerful posts in the government. Vought, a fanatical Christian Nationalist, is also head of OMB during the second Trump administration.
During his April 1 Easter luncheon, Trump said he told Vought: “Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.”
Later in his remarks, he got to his core message, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Trump’s Easter luncheon where the President made these remarks was not open to the press. The White House posted the video of Trump’s remarks on its YouTube page (and later deleted it).
Medicare and Medicaid were both created in 1965 under the Lyndon Johnson administration.
