POLITICS: Trump caught Democrats in a trap — torn by Medicaid lies

This week, President Donald Trump officially launched his push to remove illegal aliens from state Medicaid rolls by cross-checking them against federal databases, a move that’s sure to send Democrats running to the courts yet again.

But when it comes to illegal immigrants and welfare, Democrats have a serious problem — and it’s not just their continuing slide in favorability.

It’s that they just can’t make up their minds about whether or not those here illegally are receiving federal Medicaid dollars at all.

When Congress was debating Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, one of the left’s oft-repeated refrains was that there was no need to ban illegal aliens from Medicaid’s rolls — because giving them its benefits was already against the law.

They conveniently forgot to mention the 12 states that explicitly expanded non-emergency Medicaid coverage to illegal immigrants, and the other gaping loopholes being exploited nationwide.

But in June, Trump made a move that forced Democrats drop the act and show their hand: His Health and Human Services Department began sharing Medicaid data from four states and Washington, DC, with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Cue the outrage.

Within days California Attorney General Rob Bonta, New York AG Letitia James and 19 other blue states filed suit in federal court to block the data-sharing — and gave up the game in the process. 

Democrats love to lie in the court of public opinion — but in a courtroom, you’ve got to tell the truth.

And by suing to stop Team Trump, they practically confessed: Illegal aliens are on Medicaid, and blue states are desperate to keep it that way.

Since then HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (or CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz have doubled down, expanding their partnership with ICE to include nationwide Medicaid data.

To help their effort, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Tex.) demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul cough up the data on Medicaid-receiving illegal immigrants in the Empire State, citing her legal obligations to regularly report enrollment and eligibility data to the federal government.

The Democrats’ lawsuits continue their track record of fighting beyond the limits of their power to protect illegal aliens — in this case by keeping their Medicaid data “safe” — while endangering law-abiding Americans.

Their claims that no illegal aliens take advantage of Medicaid benefits also fly in the face of Medicaid’s own records.  

Between 2021 and 2023, taxpayers spent at least $16 billion on emergency services for illegal immigrants, CMS has reported, with federal taxpayers covering more than 70% of those costs.

When you add in the billions likely spent on non-emergency services in direct circumvention of federal law, the total figure of Medicaid resources going to illegal aliens is incalculable — an enormous transfer of wealth from Americans to non-citizens who shouldn’t be here at all.

Welfare benefits like Medicaid have been some of the strongest magnets spurring mass migration into this country and encouraging people to illegally stay.

Halting those perks, as Trump and Republicans in Congress are rightly doing, will do much to turn the magnet off.

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Stealing from Medicaid is especially grievous because the program is intended to help America’s most vulnerable, including low-income children and people with disabilities.

When illegal aliens or other ineligible people take Medicaid, they not only suck up taxpayer resources, they reroute precious resources from legitimate Medicaid recipients who already have to compete for a limited pool of providers.

It’s downright despicable — yet Democrats in Congress and in at least 20 blue states seem more than happy to run interference to ensure that it continues.

Some Democrats are begging for their party to moderate after November’s resounding defeat.

Some — like New York City primary voters — are sprinting further to the left.

If they want to appeal to the majority of voters in the coming midterms, though, they need to get their Medicaid stories straight.

More important, they need to get their priorities straight.

Instead of robbing from taxpayers to give to law-breakers, Democrats should protect Medicaid for the Americans who truly need it.

They could do that by following the lead of Republicans like Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, who just signed a law referring illegal aliens fraudulently receiving welfare to ICE so they can be deported.

If Democrats can’t make up their minds about illegal aliens and welfare, the American people will make up their minds about the Democrats — and keep rejecting them at the ballot box.

Hayden Dublois is the Data and Analytics Director for the Foundation for Government Accountability.