Drunk on power, Republicans attempt to gut healthcare again

It's like 2017 all over again. No matter what happens the GOP has created a massive opening for Democrats, who must be on offense and drive the point home.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is literally praying to god that he can get a budget bill passed with massive cuts to Medicaid and social safety net programs—so that he and the GOP can give giant tax cuts to the rich—under orders from their supreme leader, Donald Trump.

“This is a prayer request,” he told the far-right group Americans for Prosperity. “Just pray this through for us, because it is very high-stakes, and everybody knows that…I don’t think anybody wants to be in front of this train. I think they want to be on it.”

But no one truly following the tenets of the faith could possibly believe that killing health care for veterans, disabled people, parents of developmentally-challenged children, seniors, and the poor—while giving billions to the wealthy—is the Christian thing to do. Pope Francis himself, in critical condition with pneumonia, rebuked Catholic convert JD Vance for promoting “America First” while invoking his faith.

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Johnson is scheduling a vote Tuesday night on a budget resolution extending Trump’s tax cuts, getting billions more for Trump’s fascistic mass deportation plan and slashing $880 billion from Medicaid and cutting other social safety net programs. Trump and Johnson are playing a feeble bait and switch, and too much of the media falls for it. They’re saying they’re not cutting Medicaid—they’re just cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.” Trump even went on Fox to pledge he’s not cutting Medicaid.

And yet, the cuts in the bill are to Medicaid before they find the supposed “waste, fraud and abuse.” Everyone’s for cutting waste, but if that’s to be seriously done, it’s a larger project that will take a couple of years, independent of everything else. When you’ve got Elon Musk, just slashing and burning—firing the large team a the USDA fighting bird flu, or example, only to realize it was a mistake and hiring them back—there’s nothing thoughtful about it.

And claiming you need $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid before you’ve found the supposed waste—just because it’s a number that fits with the cuts you need to push through the tax cuts for the rich and for the mass deportations—is just like Trump telling the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” him 11,000-odd votes so he can win the state. It’s making up fraud on the go to fulfill your agenda.

Republicans House members in swing districts are scared to death, with some saying they don’t know how they’ll vote. Meanwhile, the cuts are not enough for the same band of mega-MAGA budget hawks who’ve voted against budget bills for over two years now, forcing the GOP leadership to turn to the Democrats to keep the government open and extend Nancy Pelosi’s budget from 2021. But Johnson has said his prayers, and plans to move forward.

As The Washington Post noted, “The legislation would start the reconciliation process, a legislative mechanism that would allow the GOP to head off a Democratic Senate filibuster, but the competing demands have boxed in the speaker—and could put the brakes on Trump’s legislative plans.”

Right now the GOP only has 218 seats—Rep. Elise Stefanik is still there, holding off on Senate confirmation as nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, to help Johnson get this through—while Democrats have 215. Trump’s picking off members for his Cabinet wasn’t a bright idea. Already, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee told reporters he’s likely voting no because the bill isn’t extreme enough, as did Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana. Thomas Massie of Virginia is indicating he will vote no as well.

Then there are all those vulnerable Republicans in swing districts with a gun to their heads by Trump, pleading with the supreme leader not to cut Medicaid. This particularly grotesque dog-whistle from GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey was an indication of the fear that is gripping them.

“Don’t touch seniors’ Medicare, and don’t cut Medicaid, because it isn’t just for lazy welfare people. It’s for real people,” Van Drew told the Post he told Trump in a phone call. “That’s the new Republican Party, a populist party, a party of working people, a party of blue-collar people.”

Yes, “real” people will be affected too as opposed to just those “lazy” Black and Latino people. That is how bigoted the GOP is now, having to publicly make arguments that, hey, the “real” White people will be hurt. As racist as this is, it’s true that cuts to Medicaid will harm tens of millions of people—many of them White, Republican and in ruby red states—who get health care via the expansion of the Affordable Care Act. And for some Republican House members in swing districts, like California’s David Valadao, the majority of their constituents—in his case two-thirds—are on Medicaid.

Democrats are already pouncing on the GOP. No matter what happens with the vote, the die is cast. We see the intent of the GOP to give more money to the rich while throwing the poor, seniors, veterans and disabled people to the wolves. If the bill succeeds and gets through the Senate under budget reconciliation with only the 51 votes necessary, it will be a disaster for many Americans—and for the GOP.

But even if the bill doesn’t get passed with the cuts, Americans have been awakened and will know it was stopped only because Democrats sounded the alarm. This is similar to 2005, when George W. Bush thought his narrow re-election win in 2004—the second closet popular vote win by a president this century after Trump in 2024, excluding the contested 2000 race—and moved to privatize Social Security. It didn’t happen, but the effort backfired and caused the Democrats to win back the House in a landslide and take back the Senate in the 2006 mid-terms.

From Politico:

Private messaging guidance from party leaders, sent to Democratic lawmakers ahead of a planned Tuesday budget vote and obtained by POLITICO, urged them to accuse Republicans of “betray[ing] the middle class by cutting Medicaid while giving huge tax breaks to billionaire donors.” And it encouraged members to “localize” the effects of slashing billions from Medicaid.

“It is critical that you make the damaging local impacts of this legislation real for the people you represent,” said the memo circulated on Monday.

House Majority PAC, the flagship super PAC closely aligned with House Democratic leadership, is also exploring Medicaid-focused paid ads, communications director C.J. Warnke said. And several House Democratic members are also preparing a slew of Medicaid-related content, particularly on social media, according to two strategists involved in the efforts and granted anonymity to describe them.

All of that is great. But more than that Democrats have got to hold the line, and not fall for the attacks from Republicans—particularly if the GOP manages to keep most of its caucus together—that they are causing the government to shut down, something the media parrots too. They must refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless they get concessions, including ending Trump’s freeze on spending.

No Democrat should vote for a bill with cuts to social programs, and if Republicans do not have the votes, then they are the ones responsible for attempting to shut down the government. Conversely, if they do have the votes, then they’re responsible for gutting health care for millions of Americans. Either way, Democrats have got to make sure they pay a big price.