Fact Check: Kamala Harris Claims Trump ‘Tried to Cut Medicare Every Year He Was President’

CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris claimed during a speech on Friday that former President Donald Trump has tried to cut Medicare “every year.”

VERDICT: False. Trump did not try to cut Medicare during his time in office; the Biden-Harris administration has cut Medicare Advantage, which a majority of Medicare beneficiaries use over traditional Medicare.

Harris said during an address on her proposed economic policy, “He [Trump] tried to cut Medicare every year he was president. Threatening a program that tens of millions of seniors count on.”

However, despite Harris’s claim, this is not true. An NBC News fact check found that Trump’s White House budget proposals did not call for benefit cuts to Medicare.

NBC News wrote:

His fiscal 2020 blueprint called for Medicare changes to lower payments to providers and suppliers through new incentives and a lower inflation benchmark. Biden and Democrats embraced the same types of “cuts” under Obamacare, which extended the solvency of Medicare by lowering payments to hospitals and insurers, in exchange for more customers.

Sahil Kapur, a senior political reporter for NBC News, wrote, “Democrats have been using this line for years. It’s false. Trump’s budgets didn’t cut Medicare benefits; they targeted providers & suppliers—the same “cuts” Dems enacted in the ACA.”

In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has moved to cut Medicare Advantage, which is so well liked and popular compared to traditional Medicare that over 50 percent of seniors, roughly 33 million, choose it over traditional Medicare.

Also, due to the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, they had to bail out Medicare Part D using billions of dollars to bail out insurers and placate seniors 100 days before the presidential election.

Joe Grogan, who served as the director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, told Breitbart News in an interview that the administration’s efforts to bail out Medicare Part D premiums with billions of dollars are akin to putting a “tourniquet on a mortal wound.”