CNBC editor has warning for those who think government spending binge can last forever

CNBC’s Rick Santelli warned viewers on Friday that the U.S. cannot afford to continue its excessive spending on those who do not truly need to be on government social programs.

Santelli warned that the federal government needs to cut back its excessive and wasteful spending in order to afford helping American citizens who are truly in need of government assistance. After panelist Kitty Richards, a former Treasury Department official, said that Republicans want to take millions of Americans’ healthcare away from them, Santelli argued that most of these people do not truly need to be on welfare or receive other government handouts.

“Here’s the only bullet points that I like to use, it’s the market … When I hear that we’re kicking people off [of] healthcare, you know, people need to do better research on exactly where we’re going, where we’ve been and in the past, how we’ve arrived at various functions between welfare and entitlements,” Santelli said. “You know what? We can’t afford to keep helping people that don’t really need the type of help that some of the bullet points say they need, because if we keep doing this folks, and this is important, we won’t be able to afford to help anybody.”

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Earlier in the segment, Richards said that President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will slash healthcare coverage for Americans. The legislation is making changes to Medicaid, which includes new requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents and penalizes states that offer the program to illegal immigrants, according to CNBC.

The legislation will also make changes to the Affordable Care Act by eliminating automatic enrollment and shortening the open enrollment period, CNBC reported.

Despite these proposed changes, some Republicans believe the legislation will only add to the federal deficit. Some Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, have said they are opposed to the current version of the bill over its excessive spending and its raising of the debt ceiling.

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted against the legislation over their concerns about the deficit. Elon Musk, who has recently clashed with Trump, called the bill a “disgusting abomination” in a Tuesday X post and accused any Republican who voted in favor of knowing they “did wrong.”

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