The adoption of the Republicans’ budget bill has thrown a spotlight onto the hot-button issue that could make or break President Trump’s domestic agenda: Medicaid.

The massive government health care program is at the heart of the GOP’s plan to slash federal spending in order to trim deficits and make budget space for Trump’s new tax cuts. But the topic is dividing Republicans both within and between the chambers of Congress, where conservatives favor steep cuts to Medicaid, centrists say they’ll oppose any erosion of health benefits for their constituents, and GOP leaders are left straddling the gap in search of a compromise that can appease both camps.

They have their work cut out for them.

The 70-page budget plan approved by Republicans in both chambers contains few policy details, and it mentions Medicaid only once. But it instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to locate $880 billion in spending cuts over the next decade. That’s mathematically impossible, the Congressional Budget Office says, without cutting Medicaid, which provides health coverage to more than 70 million people.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders maintain they can reach that number by weeding out waste, fraud and abuse in the program. But Democrats and many health care advocates disagree. And now that the GOP budget has been........

© The Hill