While Republicans maintain proposed changes to Medicaid —including new "community engagement requirements" of at least eighty hours per month of work, education, or service for able-bodied adults without dependents — aim to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, Beshear warns cuts to the federal-state health insurance program would be devastating and uproot rural hospitals.
"You will see people feel betrayed, and you will see significant political movement if if they make these cuts," Beshear told Katie Couric on her podcast.
A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over a decade.
In the meantime, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has his eye on the debt, which he says will continue to balloon even as members of his party claim victory in shrinking government. Paul told Fox News he's open to settling on a deal, but he can't support the current proposal regarding the nation's debt ceiling.
"I support cutting as much spending as we could get consensus on. I will even accept compromise on how much spending cuts we can get, but I'm not voting to add $5 trillion to the debt ceiling," he told Fox News. "Conservatives have never voted for that, and now conservatives are lining up and falling all over themselves to vote for the largest debt ceiling increase in all of history."
For now, members of the House have their work cut out for them — with a slim Republican majority and more than a dozen GOP leaders who have vowed they will not support cuts to the health care safety net programs that residents in their states depend on.