Maybe you thought adding a work requirement to Medicaid, the health insurance for low-income Americans, would cut down on the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ committed by those layabouts who soak up medical care for free.

Medicaid facts contradict this myth: The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2022, 37% of people on Medicaid were children. 54% were working age adults, and 48% worked that year. Nine percent were elderly, and just three percent of all receiving Medicaid benefits were not working long-term.

To see what the Republicans’ Medicaid work requirements will do, consider Arkansas where a state-mandated work requirement threw thousands of people off Medicaid. It wasn’t that the poor were not working; many just lacked the technology and computer skills necessary to report their employment hours, as required by the state. In Arkansas, a poor older man who was diabetic had no clue as to how to use a computer to record his work hours and was dropped from Medicaid because he failed to report his employment. People who might be exempt from the requirement were similarly dropped. Is this the kind of America we want for our people?

Slashes to Medicaid hurt rural hospitals and nursing homes, many of which will have to close. Loss of health insurance coverage for the poor will lead to rising costs for medical services to cover these losses, and health insurance premiums for those who are otherwise insured will rise.

More than 2.5 million Americans are slated to lose access to food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), increasing hunger among families with the lowest income.

The House GOP budget that just passed by one vote will cut $500 billion from Medicare, due to a 2010 law that requires offsets, in this case for the cost of huge tax cuts for the very rich, the top 0.5%.

The GOP tax plan will mean Americans making between $17,000 and $51,000 will lose about $700 a year. On average, Americans with incomes of less than $17,000 a year will lose more than $1,000. But if you are among the top 0.1% of earners, you will gain close to $390,000 a year.

The growing wealth gap moving money from the poor to the rich has increased in the past 40 or so years. Squeezing yet more from the ‘least of these’ to give to those with the most ought to offend the conscience of all Americans.

The stench of this immoral budget is sickening.

Cate McMahon lives in Wolfeboro.