One of my podcasts this week was wondering why the clown show admin was bothering to cut medicare. They cited estimates that this bill would increase the US debt by 7 trillion over the next whatever years (like 10 or 15, I forget the exact period), and the medicare/medicaid cuts would only save 1 trillion of that. So basically, why bother saving a fraction of the cost if it's gonna be a bananas increase anyway. You'd think the fragile orange wouldn't want anyone negatively reacting to his decisions, especially his cultist voters in poor red states.
To sell the narrative of cutting waste. The fact that people will be hurt by this doesn't factor into their consideration in the slightest and they need to stay on message.
I don't think they need to cut those to lie about cutting waste. They can just say they found 9 gazillion dollars of fraud and this bill made everything better even if it changed nothing (except of course giving money to the rich). Why would they need to change anything to keep lying to people?