CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten on Wednesday called out House Republicans’ “atrocious” move in proposing massive spending cuts to Medicaid to fund President Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill.”
“The politics of this are so extremely bad, it blows my mind,” Enten told CNN’s Kate Bolduan of a move that could leave millions of Americans without health care.
Enten turned to a KFF poll from April in which 76% of respondents indicated their opposition to major federal cuts to Medicaid. Just 24% of respondents said they favored the cuts.
He then broke down the poll by political affiliation, pointing to how 95% of Democrats, 79% of independents and 55% of Republicans opposed Medicaid cuts.
“This, simply put, is not popular on any part of the aisle. From the left all the way to the right, the opposition is in the majority,” Enten stressed.
“When you get a majority of Republicans, majority of independents, a majority of Democrats to agree on anything, you know that is where the American public stands, and they stand strongly.”
Asked if there’s data showing why Americans are strongly opposed to the proposed cuts, Enten turned to another KFF poll from February that found that 62% of Republicans — along with 62% of Democrats — had said that they or someone close to them was currently, or previously, on Medicaid.
“And this, I think, drives it all home, which is why cuts to Medicaid are so unpopular. It is because it touches everybody,” Enten said.