No. of Recommendations: 8
Which most likely means the WTF gears in her head were turning.
No, because then she would have said, "Of course not." But she didn't. Because it was a good question, and one she didn't have the answer to, because the OPM language was so broad that it clearly applied to Medicaid.
Did it explicitly say, "cut of Medicaid"?
Nope. Nor did it explicitly say cut any program by name. But explicitly applied every federal finance assistance program except those that were exempt.
The only programs excepted by name were Medicare and Social Security. The other exceptions were for described categories.
Medicaid didn't meet any of the exceptions.
So the logical (not moronic or deepstater) interpretation of the order is that it applied to Medicaid.
That's a politically dumb thing to do, so it's probably not what they would have intended if they had taken their time in drafting this - but it's an error that remains in place until it's fixed.
They screwed up, Dope. This wasn't something that could be done in a two page memo without any planning. They haven't even been able to get Vought appointed as head of the OMB yet! This never should have been tried until they had a Director in place that could interact with the other agencies and figure out how to draft this kind of thing without causing a fustercluck. Instead, they wanted to move fast - and so they screwed it up so badly they had to pull the whole thing altogether.
