Dozens of protesters and disability advocates were arrested for disrupting a House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting to fine-tune legislation that includes Medicaid cuts.
The U.S. Capitol Police arrested 25 people for illegally demonstrating inside the Rayburn House Office Building, where the meeting was taking place. More arrests were also being made.
The arrests came as lawmakers on the panel were beginning what is expected to be a marathon hearing to parse through the measure, which includes billions in cuts to Medicaid spending over the next decade and is expected to remove millions from government health care rolls.
Many of the protesters expressed fears that if the bill passed as is, they would be stripped of their health care coverage.
Danny Saenz, a disability advocate with disability rights group Adapt of Texas, flew from Austin, Texas, to demonstrate against the bill. He balked at the GOP’s messaging that the Medicaid portion of the bill was geared toward rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the program that is used by over 72 million Americans.
“It’s our lives,” he said.
The measure is part of the House GOP’s broader push to muscle through sweeping tax relief and spending cuts, border and defense funding, and energy policy changes through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.
The committee was tasked with finding at least $880 billion in spending cuts — the most out of any other House panel — to help pay for the tax portion of the broader reconciliation package. While there are other components to the panel’s legislation, like rolling back regulations from the Inflation Reduction Act, that could help reach that target, cuts to Medicaid have been the focal point in the GOP’s hunt for savings and of criticism by Democrats.
