Dems find footing by defending Medicaid
As Republicans claim the popular government program isn’t on the chopping block, their colleagues on the other side of the aisle say the math isn’t mathing.
House Democrats spent the day hammering Republicans over a budget plan they say slashes Medicaid to bankroll tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
Allow me to explain: Democrats turned the GOP’s 2017 push to repeal the Affordable Care Act—and roll back Medicaid—into a political weapon, making health care the defining issue of their 2018 House takeover. Seven years later, they’re trying to revive that playbook, casting themselves as the last line of defense for a program that covers more than 72 million Americans.
What they’re saying: Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.)—a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid—said he and his colleagues have found success localizing the Republican budget plan and demonstrating that the cuts will not impact just Democrats.
“This is going to impact you. And you will see, and you have seen, the increased feeling of voters’ remorse because people are realizing they’ve been duped,” Carter told me this afternoon. “These cuts are impacting the very people who supported Trump in 2024.”
In the know: House Republicans are scrambling to pass a plan that could unlock budget reconciliation, a procedural tool enabling them to enact much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda on a party-line vote in both houses of Congress.