House republicans are confronted with a fundamental problem if they reach a critical phase to make their “one big, beautiful account” to perform President Trump’s agenda. They want to cut deep into the federal programs without recognizing that they cause meaningful damage to their voters or states.
This worse situation stems from the natural tension between conservative determination to return federal expenses and the tendency of politicians to want to keep their jobs. Doing the first can work against the last.
That explains the verbal gymnastics that Republicans perform this week to claim that their legislation would not really take anything away from Americans who should get it. They must essentially find a way to cut huge amounts of Medicaid without looking as if they are taking an ax in the government’s health program for the poor.
Not only are their own political future and control over the house in danger, but they also don’t want to oppose President Trump. He has made it clear that he has no desire to see a head that says: “Trump, Republicans cut medicaid”, although he also wants to sweep – and expensive – legislation that encapsulates his agenda of reducing taxes.
To meet these competing requirements, Republicans insist that they will be sure that only the ‘legitimate’ beneficiaries of help from programs such as Medicaid and Nutrition Aid will continue to receive them – although ‘lawfully’ can be a subjective term. Their Medicaid proposal that leaves released on Sunday, avoids some of the most drastic – and easily attacked – cuts, while they still impose new requirements and costs on beneficiaries whose congressional budget Office said that the federal health insurance for nearly nine million people would eliminate and make it less affordable for millions more.
Republicans say that they are going to strengthen federal utilities by terminating ‘waste, fraud and abuse’, by checking the suitability more carefully and by ensuring that immigrants without papers do not get help they do not earn – all without helping to a single eligible person. Moreover, valid recipients must go to work.
The goal, as speaker Mike Johnson said in a recent CNN interview, is to ensure that Medicaid does not go to “29-year-old men on their banks play video games.”
“This is not a talk point,” Mr. Johnson told reporters last week. “Republicans have an indictment to do this in a way in which nobody loses their coverage.”
The error in the GOP argument is that spending cuts of the scope that the party is considering will almost certainly lead to benefits and services that are refused to some eligible beneficiaries, especially if the congress makes more responsibility against the States, which may or may not make the difference.
Democrats are not about to make that result go unnoticed or lets the claims of the Republicans remain undisputed, regardless of how aggressively they claim that no deserved American is denied help. Democrats and their political allies immediately attacked the new GOP proposal as ‘horrible’, regardless of how Republicans characterize the plan.
“For months, the Republicans tried their way forward on their agenda with magical talk that is completely removed from reality,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat van New York and the minority leader last week. “Republicans say that they want trillions in taxes for the rich, trillions in publishing cuts, but somehow claim that these drastic changes do not harm the average Americans.”
“Cut Medicaid,” they say, “but nobody will lose benefits,” he added. “That is totally illogical.”
With the reality that sinks in those deep cuts, a deep recoil could cause Republicans started scaling back their ambitions for $ 2 trillion in general cuts. Political fear is also part of the reason that the most difficult deliberations in collecting the Republican account have been deterred until this week, because legislators have remained divided on how to reach their savings.
Now the decision time arrives if the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Agricultural Committee and the tax -writing ways and resource committee, all have to come up with their parts of the general plan on Tuesday.
The entire exercise is frustrating hard-right conservatives that say they have no trouble lifting federal programs and accepting the consequences, because they believe that is what their voters have sent them to Washington to do. They believe that Republicans should embrace the cuts instead of trying to trivialize them and see their Gop colleagues as cowards when it comes to making the difficult choices for expenditure.
“They just don’t have guts,” said representative Tim Burchett, Republican van Tennessee. “Congress never has guts.”
Representative Jodey C. Arrington, the Republican of Texas who leads the budget committee and has put forward on deep cuts to ward off what he sees as a coming economic cataclysm, has expressed a similar image, albeit more diplomatic.
“What we miss everywhere in Washington – perhaps, such as common sense and common decency – is courage,” said Mr. Arrington last week. “Courage to do what is needed. Courage to do what every generation of American leaders has done when they are confronted with such an epic crisis that could actually leave America irreparably damaged.”
Of course there is a different approach for Republicans who want to shun for austerity, but still want to expand trillions of dollars in tax benefits without stacking costs on the federal debt: they can increase income through higher taxes.
Mr. Trump has flirted in recent days with the idea of levying taxes on very high earners, although he admitted that it could be a political loser for his party. But if there is one thing that Republicans in the congress want less than a head about cutting Medicaid, it is one that says: “Republicans increase taxes.”
As the three committees progress this week, it will become much clearer what is on the chopping block and whether Republicans can sell their claim that those who are entitled to federal help will continue to get it. Mr. Johnson thinks they can.
“There will be many savings for the American people,” he said. “I think it will be extremely popular if we get it done.”
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