In the week since the House Republican Study Committee released the latest version of its extremist budget agenda, cable news coverage largely dropped the ball in addressing the most dangerous elements of what the GOP’s legislative agenda will be if the party retakes control of both Congress and the White House next year.

MSNBC led the way in cable news reporting on the RSC’s latest budget proposal with almost 11 minutes of coverage from March 20-26, followed by a single roughly 2 ½-minute segment from Fox News. And in a shameful last place, CNN did not cover the RSC budget proposal during the allotted time frame.

The Republican Study Committee, which is composed of more than 170 members of the House Republican caucus including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), would target vital benefits programs serving retirees, low-income families, and underserved communities, while rolling back insurance subsidies the Affordable Care Act and restricting reproductive choice.

An online article from NBC News noted that the budget outline from House Republicans is “unlikely to become law this year,” but the proposals instead “reflect how many Republicans will seek to govern if they win the 2024 elections.” These include plans to raise the retirement eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare in the future and to convert Medicare into a private market plan, “echoing a proposal that Republican former Speaker Paul Ryan had rallied support for,” while at the same time attacking the Affordable Care Act by “rolling back its subsidies and regulations” over private insurance. Moreover, the RSC also calls for enacting the Life at Conception Act, which would effectively outlaw in vitro fertilization and all forms of abortion by defining human life as beginning at “the moment of fertilization.”

But these radical proposals being put forth by a group representing the overwhelming majority of House Republicans have received scant attention on cable news.

From March 20, when the Republican Study Committee released its budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year titled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” through March 26, cable news networks dedicated a total of only about 14 minutes to the RSC’s extreme plans. Fox News dedicated just 2 minutes and 39 seconds to the budget proposal — all from one interview with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) defending the proposal, describing it as “responsible to try to open up the conversation about what we do.” MSNBC dedicated about 11 minutes to the proposal over the course of 5 segments and a handful of mentions in segments about other topics. CNN did not cover House Republicans’ extreme fiscal platform during the studied time period.

Much of the RSC’s latest budget plan, including sections targeting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, and its praise for the Life at Conception Act (which would jeopardize access to IVF treatments), is virtually identical to the draconian budget proposal proposed by the RSC last year (compare FY2024 and FY2025). Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, posted a thread laying out further effects of these proposals on health care and rollback of protections for preexisting conditions, which would result in “more people uninsured and higher out-of-pocket health costs.”

These Republican proposals targeting vital benefits programs deserve greater attention following comments that former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump made during a March 11 interview with CNBC indicating his willingness to cut entitlement programs if reelected.

MSNBC led all competitors in discussing GOP budget agenda, while CNN was oddly silent

Unfortunately, what little cable news coverage there was actually downplayed the significance of the Republican plan. On the March 21 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, after co-host Mika Brzezinski outlined the extreme GOP budget proposals, co-host Joe Scarborough invited Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) to, in Scarborough’s words, “tell us why he opposes everything Mika just read.”

Scarborough, himself a former Republican congressman and now a registered independent, then helpfully guided Lawler, saying, “Mike, let's just get these out of the way. You do not support altering Social Security or Medicare in its current form, do you?”

Later that afternoon, on MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports, guest anchor Yasmin Vossoughian said that House Republicans were “giving us a glimpse of how they'd govern if they win the 2024 elections.”

MSNBC reporter Julie Tsirkin, however, then stated that “first and foremost, these budget proposals are almost always political documents rather than actually policy reality,” even as she acknowledged that the RSC included among its members “Speaker Johnson and some top members of his leadership team.”

Fox anchor Neil Cavuto actually treated the proposals more seriously, noting that “Donald Trump has vacillated on this somewhat — he is open, or was open, in an interview on another network, to addressing these entitlements.” Cavuto further characterized the proposals as “very brave … because that’s where the money is,” but worried that they were also a “risky strategy.”

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for any of the terms “Republican,” “GOP,” “RSC,” “conservative,” or “House” with close proximity to any of the terms “budget,” “plan,” “study,” or “spend” or any variation of the term “proposal” from March 20, 2024, when the Republican Study Committee released its FY25 Budget Proposal titled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America,” through March 26, 2024.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the RSC's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the budget proposal. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the budget proposal with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned the budget proposal without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the budget proposal scheduled to air later in the broadcast.