Markey At Politico Summit: Ready For ‘battle’ With Trump On Health Care

Sen. Ed Markey is fed up with the Trump administration's health care upheaval and is gearing up for a Democratic reversal of Republicans’ sweeping changes after the midterm elections.

At POLITICO’s Health Care Summit on Tuesday, the Massachusetts Democrat rebuked the trillion-dollar health care cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer. He said the White House’s proposed budget for 2027, released in early April, marks a continued effort from Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to undermine the public health in our country.”

“All of this has to be put together as a story for the American people to understand as they head for the polls this fall,” he said. “Because in my opinion, there's a landslide that is about to befall the Republicans, and a lot of it is because of what they have done to the health care system.”

Markey also called on Kennedy — who will testify Wednesday on the proposed budget before the Senate Health Committee, which Markey sits on — to resign.

“He is fundamentally a threat to the public health in our country,” said Markey.

The senator, who chairs the Senate Health Committee’s primary health and retirement security subcommittee, has big plans to reverse Republicans’ far-reaching health care moves if Democrats win back both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections. He wants his party to pursue a reconciliation bill that will undo the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and double the budget of the National Institutes of Health, sending the package straight to Trump’s desk.

“We're ready for that battle, Mr. President. Let's go for it,” Markey said. “That has to be the agenda for the Democratic Party in this election, and then it has to be what we do next year.”

Trump’s 2027 budget proposes slashing NIH funding by about $5 billion, or 10 percent. Congress isn’t expected to approve that cut, after both Republicans and Democrats denied the 40 percent slash Trump requested for 2026, and as some GOP lawmakers have recently said they would continue to oppose cuts to the biomedical research agency.

Markey, who is up for reelection in November, said Trump’s continued “attack” on the NIH, as well as the cuts to Medicaid and the ACA that he signed into law, will not play well with Americans in the midterms, with soaring health care costs expected to be top of mind for voters.

“Health care is really a wedge into this election,” he said. “The lives of those swing voters across the country are completely and fully being devastated by Trump policies.”