The Gabe Evans representative, Republican of Colorado, obtained his ticket for Washington in November when he beat a democratic member of the Congress by less than 1 percentage point – only 2,449 votes.
Now, Mr. Evans, 39, helps write legislation that could cement his own ticket at home.
The member of the Congress of the first mandate, including the Swing District, just north of Denver, includes 151,749 beneficiaries of Medicaid, is at the Energy and Trade Committee. The republican budgetary resolution which laid the foundations for radical legislation in order to promulgate the national agenda of President Trump educates the panel, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to reduce the expenses of $ 880 billion over the next decade to help pay a significant tax reduction. This number is impossible to reach without considerably reducing the cost of Medicaid, the government program which provides health insurance to low -income Americans.
While the Republicans of Congress find it difficult to merge around the main elements of what Mr. Trump calls his “great magnificent bill”, Mr. Evans and other GOP legislators of some of the most competitive districts in the country are confronted with the votes of the committee next week to approve the reductions of popular programs that could return to haunt them politically.
And the Democrats are happy with the prospect of republican holders who support the file supporting the effort.
“These members of the Congress gained with less votes than the number of people in their district on Medicaid,” said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran democratic strategist and former spokesperson for the Democratic Congress Congress Committee. “Voting for that is like being the captain of the Titanic and deciding to intentionally strike the iceberg.”
The group includes the representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, republican of Iowa, who also sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee and is on land even more fragile than Mr. Evans, although he has repeatedly rejected a challenger. Last year, Ms. Miller-Meks, who represents 132,148 MEDICAID recipients, won her 0.2%seat, or 799 votes. His local office in Davenport has been besieged by demonstrators concerned about spending reductions.
The representative is also the representative Thomas H. Kean Jr., a republican of a highly competitive district of New Jersey.
Within the Agriculture Committee, which must find $ 230 billion in a decade, the Republicans compete for the quantity of federal food aid cuts, with those of competitive seats suspicious of reductions that could strike their voters. This panel also includes some of the most threatened Republicans in the Chamber: representatives Rob Bresnahan Jr., a Republican of Pennsylvania’s first mandate; Don Bacon du Nebraska; Zach nunn of iowa; and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.
The two committees are expected to meet next week to work and finalize their bills, although this can change if the Republicans fail to agree on the reductions should be included. The panels were to meet this week, but postponed the meetings in the midst of persistent disagreements.
“Many of them have spoken in private to their leadership, telling them that it is a really difficult vote for them,” said Minnesota representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, the classification democrat of the Agriculture Committee about the Republicans.
Adding to their dilemma, Trump said that he did not want to “touch” Medicaid, and some far -right opinion leaders have alarms to reduce the program.
“Medicaid – You must be careful, because a lot of Maga on Medicaid,” said Stephen K. Bannon recently, Mr. Trump’s former advisor, on his “War Room” podcast. More than 60% of Trump voters said Medicaid was “very important” for their communities, according to a recent KFF survey.
While the GOP is struggling to tinker with legislation which can please its right flank, which requires deep cuts, without the moderate alienated who oppose it, many vulnerable legislators fear that they are preparing to vote for something that may never become law.
Representative Nick Lalota, a New York Republican who opposes Medicaid Cups, said that he and his colleagues had no interest in going through the difficult process of writing and voting for a bill which could not finally adopt the Senate, which adopted a fraction of the expenses.
“We are not trying to float a test ball,” said Lalota in an interview. “We only want to vote for something real, which is passable by the Senate and that the president will sign.”
Such concerns are one of the reasons why President Mike Johnson was forced this week to abandon one of the most aggressive options that the GOP was planning to reduce Medicaid costs: to reduce what the federal government pays for states to take care of the working age adults that have become eligible for the program through the expansion of Medicaid.
In private, many Republicans of Capitol Hill said that they expected the Chamber to miss its day deadline of the self-imposed Memorial to write and adopt the bill, and possibly be satisfied with a set of tax discounts approved by the Senate which does not include any major change in Medicaid, food assistance or any other popular program. Such a result would raise the tax conservatives on the right right, who require that the package does not add to the deficit and which could drop the entire package if they refused to follow.
Certain vulnerable Republicans who oppose the reduction of Medicaid have declared that they always hoped to find other ways to reduce the costs of the program, such as the imposition of work requirements and the tightening of the rules to ensure that undocumented immigrants, who are prohibited by program law, cannot receive any of its services. And they note that there are other proposals to increase the federal income necessary to compensate for tax reductions.
“There are ways to reduce the energy and trade budget that are not only health care,” said Lalota. “I am not so fatalistic that it is a difficult vote.”
But cleaning the rules of fraud and tightening of Medicaid generates a lot of money that the republican plan requires. And the Congressional Budget Office Wednesday wrote that after having estimated the budget impact of four different options to cut MedicaidAll would have the same overall result: “Registration would decrease and the number of people without health insurance would increase.”
Democrats have been working for weeks to capitalize on the potential impact of cuts.
They targeted the vulnerable Republicans with display signs in their districts accusing them of voting to reduce Medicaid to give billionaires like Elon Musk a tax reduction. The Committee of the National Republican Campaign has published a letter of transfer and desire threatening companies with display panels with defamation proceedings. Companies have removed the signs in a decision which, according to the Republicans, was proof that the Democrats were lying on the Medicaid cuts, but that the Democrats argue that it was simply to avoid costly prosecution on the advertisements that precisely reflected the GOP budget plan.
“All national democrats are pathetic lies and fear of fear to distract their failures,” said Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the campaign committee, in a statement.
Mr. Evans, for his part, tried to spin the needle by criticizing the way in which his state administers Medicaid, Charge that he paid millions of dollars to deceased and undocumented immigrants.
“The global objective is to be able to protect the program by removing fraud, waste and abuse,” he said last month at a Public Radio in Colorado. He refused to comment on this article.
Craig said that her hope was that some Republicans at the head of the center would resist their leaders and simply trace a red line on all cuts to the additional nutritional aid program or Medicaid.
“The real question is whether the moderates of my committee will really bring this to the carpet and fight these cups or if they will engrave,” said Craig.
For newcomers to Congress like Mr. Evans and Mr. Bresnahan, the situation echoes the difficult position that Marjorie Mezvinsky representative, a Democratic MP for a Pennsylvania term, was confronted in 1993 when she voted for the budget of President Bill Clinton after opposing it because it did not understand enough spending.
While she launched the decisive vote, the Republicans knew they were witness to a political death.
On the house floor, they chanted: “Goodbye, Marjorie!”
It was defeated the following year.