President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans in the U.S. Congress are weighing steep cuts to the Medicaid health program as part of a wide-ranging budget package that also would cut taxes and raise spending on defense and border security.

House Republican proposals to slash government spending on Medicaid could devastate the insurance program that covers 40 percent of District residents.

Republicans have a strategy for moving Medicaid cuts through Congress when many of their own members say they can’t support cuts: Don’t call them cuts. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that nobody will miss the hundreds of billions of dollars Republicans want to chop from the program,