President Joe Biden’s administration has been marked by corruption and the weaponization of federal power against political opponents. As the Biden administration abuses its power without consequence, this corruption continues to spread across the federal government.
Evidence of yet another scandal, this time within Biden’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is becoming clearer by the day. It’s time Congress finally woke up and started paying attention.
Emails reported by National Review and obtained by the Committee on Government Accountability and Oversight show that Biden’s CMS has been abusing its power to target Medicaid programs run by Republican governors, especially under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
In early 2023, the Biden administration issued a bulletin establishing new regulations that would crack down on state and local control of Medicaid financing, ultimately resulting in massive new tax hikes.
Though this major policy change could harm Republican and Democratic states alike, Biden’s CMS only targeted enforcement for three red states: Florida, Missouri, and Texas. The emails show that at just the time DeSantis, who I served with in Congress, looked his strongest in the Republican presidential primary, Biden’s team zeroed in on Florida. Even though they explicitly acknowledged “other states have similar hospital tax arrangements,” a Biden political appointee admitted Florida was the only state “we have concern on.”
Anyone paying attention to Biden at the time could easily see that the White House was focused on Florida for political purposes. Only days before the bulletin was released, Biden delivered a speech in Florida slamming DeSantis, in part because of his Medicaid policies, alleging Medicaid programs in Republican states are worse for the poor.
All of this points to a clear pattern of attempting to inflict pain on citizens of red states for the purpose of political targeting. This is the definition of politics over people.
It’s also the exact opposite of how former President Donald Trump handled this very topic. During his administration, federal bureaucrats attempted to jam through a similar rule called MFAR. Fortunately, Trump saw the scheme for what it was and put an end to it.
During my time in Congress, I was proud to defend Trump from incessant false attacks and allegations from congressional Democrats. Now, Biden’s administration has been caught doing far worse than anything Trump was accused of, and too many Republicans in Congress have barely said a word. This is how Biden continues to get a free pass while Trump faces an unprecedented barrage of outrageous prosecutions.
Republicans in Congress, especially those representing Florida, Texas, and Missouri, owe it to their constituents to start fighting back and holding Biden accountable. CMS’s political targeting is not just wrong. It is an unconscionable precedent. Just imagine a future Republican president targeting a blue state, such as my home state of New York. Though I would stand up and fight back, the best way to make sure this never happens is to make it clear it’s wrong regardless of what party does it.
Lawmakers can start by thoroughly investigating Biden’s Medicaid-targeting scandal.
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Lee Zeldin, an attorney and former politician, represented New York’s 1st Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2023.
