In 2018, the Democrats recognized the room, overthrowing 41 seats, especially in conservative places such as the suburbs of Utah and Oklahoma by focusing closely on a unique question: republican efforts to overthrow a popular health care program, the affordable care law.
Now, while the Republicans are pushing a budgetary resolution through the congress which will almost certainly require a kind of reducing Medicaid to finance a huge tax reduction, the Democrats see an opening to use the same strategy.
“I do not know why the Republicans double the same manual,” said senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, who in 2018 was president of the campaign of the Democrats of the Chamber.
“The town halls, people manifest themselves, presenting themselves in communities of all of America, filling the telephone lines here in Washington, DC,” continued Mr. Luján, “I think you can make a direct comparison with the outcome of what happened in 2018.”
During the first weeks of President Trump’s second term, Democrats worked to choose their political objectives in the middle of an almost daily dam of decrees and movements by the Elon Musk government ministry to finance and dismantle federal programs and fire government employees. But in the perspective of Medicaid cups, which covers more than 70 million Americans, they see a clarification problem that they hope to help them capture the same type of energy that catapulted them in power in 2018.
“The American people were upset in 2005 when the Republicans tried to privatize Social Security. The American people were thwarted in 2017 when the Republicans tried to repeal the affordable care law, “said representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, in an interview, citing two campaign cycles in which his party has struck the chamber with a republican president. “The American people are very upset at the moment, including in the communities that I represent, about the republican effort to eliminate their health care and promulgate the greatest reduction in Medicaid in the history of our country.”
He said that the Democrats would continue to hammer the “clear contrast” that they have stressed in the past to a maximum political advantage.
They are already putting money behind the message. Friday, the political action committee of democrats announced that they had bought advertising time in more than 20 districts across the country of wild republicans for having opened the door to $ 880 billion in Medicaid cups.
“They said they would reduce the costs,” said the narrator. “Instead, Trump and President Johnson should launch millions of health insurance.”
In 2017, demonstrators Républicain town hall swarmed across the country and urged their legislators not to vote to replace the affordable care law.
“Regarding health care, the whole policy is personal,” said California Nancy Pelosi representative, the Democratic leader, in 2018, the day after her room recovery. “We have made our own environment. While the GOP has truly tried to distract and divide, our candidates kept the accent on this subject. »»
Similar scenes have taken place in recent days, because the legislators have been pressed by their voters at the scope of Mr. Trump’s budget cuts. In both cases, the Republicans rejected demonstrations as coordinated by groups of liberal activists and argued that the demonstrations are not representative of the means of voters.
However, the Republicans who attended part of the first -hand outflows already warn their colleagues to adjust their messages.
Georgia Rich McCormick representative had Voters scream, laugh and oil on him During a recent town hall where he faced questions about federal workers’ layoffs and the Musc team access to taxpayers.
“We have a message which consists in saving Medicaid, Medicare,” said McCormick, referring to Mr. Trump’s promises not to touch one or the other program. “But you can lose this message with a single attitude, and if nothing else, we must pay attention to the way we send this so that it does not present itself as a dead end.”
One of the Republicans who ultimately opposed the abrogation effort, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said that she had seen parallels between the 2017 push and the current attempts to cut Medicaid.
“I have the impression that we return to the ACA era when I was trying to explain to the colleagues how much Alaska was so disproportionately affected,” Ms. Murkowski said.
The Republicans of the Chamber have not yet written legislation exposing specific discounts of expenses and tax reductions which would achieve their budgetary plan. President Mike Johnson has insisted in recent days to find “efficiency” in Medicaid – “do not reduce the advantages for people who rightly deserve it”.
“You don’t want valid workers on a program that is intended, for example, for single mothers with two small children who are just trying to do so,” said Johnson in an interview on CNN. “This is what Medicaid is used. Not for 29 -year -old men sitting on their sofas playing video games. »»
He said the Republicans would not fundamentally change the program structure, as some conservatives have long proposed and would not be a ceiling on Federal Medicaid funding.
Many Republicans are comfortable establishing work requirements for the program, but this change should only save about $ 100 billion. The budgetary plan of the Republicans of the Chamber obliges the Committee which oversees Medicaid and Medicare to find more than eight times in savings.
Arriving at this number, even among the Republicans, will be extraordinarily failed politically. And because many states have expanded their Medicaid programs in the context of the affordable care law, likely to affect a large band of the population in the country’s states.
“I will not vote for the Medicaid Cups,” said senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri republican, who was elected in 2018. “The work requirements are good, but 21% of my state residents receive Medicaid or Chip,” he said, referring to the program that offers health cover for children whose families earn too much Medicaid.
One of the Republicans who will be almost pressed in the process is the representative David Valadao de California, who represents a district where almost two in three people count on Medicaid.
Since he was elected to the congress in 2012, he was re -elected each cycle except one – in 2018.
Before voting to approve the GOP’s budgetary resolution this week, Valadao got up on the ground of the room to have the challenges of potential cuts – and to offer his party leaders a warning. Reaching $ 880 billion in budget cuts, he said that “is not an easy task.”
“I have heard of countless voters who tell me that the only way they can afford health care is programs like Medicaid,” continued Mr. Valadao, “and I will not support a final reconciliation bill which risks leaving them behind.”
“Medicaid Cuts,” he said, “are deeply unpopular to American families who sent us here to deliver to the agenda of President Trump.”