More than a third of Americans believe that Medicaid is akin to welfare, with the implicit subtext that racial and ethnic minorities are the principal beneficiaries.

If that’s what they think, they’re dead wrong.

Many more Medicaid recipients are white than black or Hispanic.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina who is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget, promulgates the conservative view.

Writing on May 22 for his home state paper, the Charleston Post and Courier, in an opinion piece that fiercely defended the Trump administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2018, Mulvaney argued:

For years, we’ve focused on how we can help Americans receive taxpayer-funded assistance. Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re now looking at how we can respect both those who require assistance and the taxpayers who fund that support. For the first time in a long time, we’re putting taxpayers first.

After laying down this classic Republican framework, Mulvaney puts his own spin on it:

Taking money from someone without an intention to pay it back is not debt. It is theft.

In other words, recipients of Medicaid and other federal programs that the Trump administration proposes to cut are thieves, and Mulvaney, with the president’s backing, is determined to end this criminal activity:

So if you left for work this morning in the dark, if you came home after your kids were asleep, if you feel lucky to get overtime pay to support your aging parents or adult children, if you’re working part-time but praying for a full-time job, if your savings are as exhausted as you are, you have not been forgotten.

Mulvaney has little understanding of or respect for social insurance — certainly as it is defined by Merriam-Webster:

protection of the individual against economic hazards (such as unemployment, old age, or disability) in which the government participates.

So who actually gets Medicaid?

A plurality, 41 percent, of Medicaid recipients, are white; 22 percent are black; 25 percent are Hispanic; and 12 percent are other ethnicities, including Asian-American.