MARIETTA – U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff has vowed to fight cuts to Medicaid, just days before a congressional committee begins weighing drastic cuts to the program that provides nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. 

Speaking at an open town hall in Marietta on Friday, Ossoff, a Democrat, urged Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to publicly oppose any cuts to Medicaid, noting that the program covers the costs of half of all childbirths in Georgia, the health-care costs for 40% of the state’s children, and the costs of 70% of its seniors who live in nursing homes.

The impact of cuts would be “devastating,” the 38-year-old senator from Atlanta told an audience of at least 200 people at the Cobb County Civic Center. “We need to raise our voices, regardless of our politics, against these proposed cuts to the Medicaid program that will put maternal health and infant health in Georgia at risk.”

Ossoff’s vow to protect Medicaid came just days before the House Energy and Commerce Committee begins this week crafting legislation that could slash billions from the program.

Coastal Georgia Congressman Buddy Carter, who has expressed his interest in running against Ossoff in next year’s elections, is a member of the committee.

Republicans, who have already ruled out massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, are turning their attention to funneling as much as $880 billion from Medicaid over the next decade to slash $1.5 trillion in spending to help finance $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and tighten border security — Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

In a telephone town hall last month, Carter said President Donald Trump insisted that no funds for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security be cut. “He has been clear about that, with the exception of waste, fraud and abuse,” Carter said.

KFF, which analyses national health issues, says the Energy and Commerce Committee cannot meet the requirements set forth in the House budget resolution without major cuts to Medicaid.

That, it said, would “leave the states facing difficult choices to raise revenues or cut spending” and “could mean dropping coverage for some people, eliminating coverage of high-cost optional benefits such as prescription drugs, or cutting payment rates to health plans and providers.”

Impeachment as an option?

In response to a demand by one member of the audience that Congress undertake impeachment proceedings against Trump, Ossoff said that some of Trump’s actions in office rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

He cited the invitation to top purchasers of his meme coin to “an intimate private dinner” with the president and his defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that his administration return to the U.S. a man wrongly deported to El Salvador.

But, Ossoff said, impeachment currently is not a realistic option.

“As strongly as I agree with you, ma’am, and I regret this is an unwelcome response,” he said. “But my job is to be honest with you. The only way to achieve what you want to achieve is to have a majority in the United States House of Representatives. And there is, and believe me, I’m working on it every single day.

The National Republican Congressional Committee later described Ossoff’s comments on impeachment “disgusting,” saying they proved Democrats want to flip the House so that they can impeach, remove, and imprison President Trump and overturn the will of Georgia voters.”