There has been some recent uproar over a regulation proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services designed to strengthen Medicaid, the government program that provides health insurance coverage for individuals below certain income levels. The regulation has sparked a curious bipartisan backlash from Capitol Hill and from state governments.

Co-authored by Luke Hogg, the program coordinator for FreedomWorks Foundation.

On April 10, 2018, President Donald J. Trump signed the Executive Order on Economic Mobility. President Trump’s plan outlines nine “principles of economic mobility” that are bound to lift struggling Americans towards self-sufficiency. Among these principles are boosting employment, promoting stable families, and choosing federalism over top-down programs.

Fiscal conservatives rightly opposed the Bipartisan Budget Act, H.R. 1892, because it blew through the spending caps by nearly $300 billion over two years and set the tone for more long-term spending by increasing the baseline at which Congress will budget. Still, this two-year budget deal only covers discretionary spending for FY 2018 and FY 2019 and doesn't touch mandatory spending, which includes programs like Medicare and Social Security whose funding runs on autopilot.

As the mandatory piece of federal expenditures consumes an ever-increasing percentage of the overall federal budget, Medicaid spending continues to rise within this mandatory piece. Many factors have contributed to skyrocketing Medicaid expenditures by the federal government, but much of this has not been to the benefit of those that Medicaid was enacted to help.