Just like the tariffs' burden: Cuts to Medicaid harm the voters who supported Donald Trump! Save Medicaid

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Missouri's Republican Senator Josh Hawley.

(A broken clock award to Senator Hawley for this opinion. Sounds to me like he is listening to his constitutents about protecting Medicaid.) 

Even a broken clock is correct two times a day! 

Trump promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.

This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.

Let’s begin with the facts of the matter. Medicaid is a federal program that provides health care to low-income Americans in partnership with state governments. Today it serves over 70 million Americans, including well over one million residents of Missouri, the state I represent.

As for Missouri, it is one of 40 Medicaid expansion states — because our voters wanted it that way. 

In 2020, the same year Trump carried the Missouri popular vote by a decisive margin, voters mandated that the state expand Medicaid coverage to working-class individuals unable to afford health care elsewhere. Voters went so far as to inscribe that expansion in our state Constitution. Now some 21 percent of Missourians benefit from Medicaid or CHIP, the companion insurance program for lower-income children. And many of our rural hospitals and health providers depend on the funding from these programs to keep their doors open.

All of which means this: If Congress cuts funding for Medicaid benefits, Missouri workers and their children will lose their health care. And hospitals will close. It’s that simple. And that pattern will be replicated in states across the country.

One of my constituents, a married mother of five, contacted me to explain why Medicaid is vital to her 8-year-old daughter, who depends on a feeding tube to survive. Formula, pump rentals, feeding extensions and other treatments cost $1,500 a month; prescriptions nearly double that cost. These expenses aren’t covered by private insurance. The mother wrote to me, “Without Medicaid, we would lose everything — our home, our vehicles and, eventually, our daughter.”

Congress should be doing everything possible to aid these working families, to make their health care better and more affordable. We should cap prescription drug costs, as I recently proposed. We should give all families in America with children a hefty tax cut. What we should not do is eliminate their health care.

Trump himself has been crystal clear on this point. Since taking office, he has repeatedly rejected calls for Medicaid benefit cuts. Just the other week, he said: “We are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Nothing at all.”

And for good reason. The president understands who his voters are. Recent polling showed that 64 percent of Republicans held a favorable view of Medicaid. About one in six has been on the program. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of Americans opposed significant cuts to Medicaid, and over half — half — had a personal or family connection to the Medicaid program.

It’s safe to say the Trump coalition was not pulling the lever for Medicaid cuts in November. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, finally woke up to this fact last week, when he withdrew his support from one of the most aggressive reductions to Medicaid on the table. 

Nevertheless, many of my House and Senate colleagues keep pushing for substantial cuts, and the House will begin to hash out its differences in negotiations this week.

My colleagues have cited the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, which has been pushing that line for months, including in a recent editorial that inveighed against my opposition to Medicaid benefit cuts. But following The Journal’s prescriptions would represent the end of any chance of us becoming a working-class party. (Maine Writer- How many Medicaid beneficiaries read The Wall Street Journal?  How many employees who work at The Wall Street Journal receive Medicaid benefits?  How many elderly relatives who have family members who work at The Wall Street Journal have used access to Medicaid for long term care coverage?  Let me answer my own questions:  Medicaid beneficiaries cannot afford a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, people who work at The Wall Street Journal earn wages much higher than the poverty level prescribed in regulations and statute, so they cannot receive the benefit, but on the other hand, I suspect many employees who work for The Wall Street Journal have a relative in their family who have received Medicaid coverage for long term care.)

Republicans, says Senator Josh Hawley, need to open their (aka "our own") 👀 eyes: Our voters support social insurance programs (especially Social Security where we voters contribute to the benefit❗). More than that, our voters depend on those programs. And there’s a reason for this that Republicans would do well to ponder. Our economy is increasingly unfriendly to working people and their families.

For the better part of 50 years, working wages have been flat in real terms. Working people cannot afford to marry when they want to, have the number of children they want to or raise those children as they want to. These days, they can barely afford to put a roof over their kids’ heads, to say nothing of health care.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans share the blame for this state of economic affairs, which is one big reason Trump got elected. He promised to shake up the status quo. (HELLO❓ Trump also promised to bring down high grocery prices.....but then zapped Americans with the burdens caused by tariffs❗) 

Republicans in Congress must pay attention. Our voters not only want us to protect the social insurance they need to get by; they also want us to fight for a better life — for a better economy with the kinds of jobs and wages that allow working people to marry and start families, to buy homes and have a stake in their towns and neighborhoods.

That’s the promise of American life. If Republicans want to be a working-class party — if we want to be a majority party — we must ignore calls to cut Medicaid and start delivering on America’s promise for America’s working people.

Josh Hawley is a Republican senator from Missouri.

Donald Trump must be impeached! Sedition must be punished!

#FireJoshHarley #Missouri

Maine Writer opinion- I suspect that some Republicans even planted opportunities for voter fraud, but the effots failed because of the integrity of the election security enforced by the U.S. Secretaries of State, IMO. 

Senator Josh Hawley is a Donald Trump enabler and must be fired!
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-josh-hawley-becomes-public-enemy-no-1-capitol-hill-n1253470

Echo opinion published in the Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a scathing rebuke Thursday, about GOP attempts to object Jan. 6,  to the Electoral College tally, of the presidential election, warning colleagues against a “dangerous ploy” that could damage the nation’s civic traditions.

Senator Sasse, a potential 2024, presidential contender, posted a lengthy explanation about his views on social media, including a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of allegations of voter fraud in key states, won by President-elect Joe Biden. 

Sasse said he felt compelled to speak “truth” as constituents and those supporting Donald Trump wanted to know where he stands on the issue.

“I will not be participating in a project to overturn the election,” Sasse wrote. He said he wanted to explain “why I have been urging my colleagues also to reject this dangerous ploy.”

Trump, the first president to lose a reelection bid in almost 30 years, has attributed his defeat to widespread voter fraud, despite nonpartisan election officials saying there wasn’t any. 

In fact, Trump pushed Republican senators to pursue his unfounded charges, even though the Electoral College, cemented Biden’s 306-232 victory and multiple legal efforts to challenge the results have failed.

The missive from Sasse offers the Republican Party a different path for the post-Trump era, in stark contrast to other potential 2024 contenders — most notably, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. — who are leading the challenge during next week’s joint session of Congress.

Sasse said the members of Congress who objected to the Electoral College vote, are “institutional arsonists.”

“Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage,” Sasse wrote. “But they’re wrong – and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”

Missouri's Josh Hawley was the first GOP senator to (wrongly!) announce he would raise objections when Congress met to affirm Biden’s victory in the election, forcing House and Senate votes that were intended to delay — but in no way alter — the final certification of Biden’s win.

Let me get this! So, it was Donald Trump who accused the father of Senator Ed Cruz of somehow participating in the John F. Kennedy assassination, but Senator Ted Cruz continues to support Trumpzism? WWWTP?

Some other Republican senators, like the the evil Senator Cruz of Texas, were expected to (wrongly) join Hawley. 

Sasse took aim at the “swampy” nature of Trump’s fundraising off the election challenge.

“Since Election Day, the president and his allied organizations have raised well over half a billion (billion!) dollars from supporters who have been led to believe that they’re contributing to a ferocious legal defense,” Sasse wrote. “But, in reality, they’re mostly just giving the president and his allies a blank check that can go to their super-PACs, their next plane trip, their next campaign or project. That’s not serious governing. It’s swampy politics.”

He put the election challenges being waged by Trump’s legal team in Nebraska terms.

Sasse wrote that he couldn’t “simply allege that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee is ‘on the take’ because they didn’t send the Cornhuskers to the Rose Bowl, and then – after I fail to show evidence that anyone on the Selection Committee is corrupt – argue that we need to investigate because of these pervasive ‘allegations’ of corruption.”

With 160 million votes nationwide, there might be some instances of fraud, but nothing of the magnitude to overturn the election.

“We have good reason to think this year’s election was fair, secure, and law-abiding,” Sasse wrote. “That’s not to say it was flawless. But there is no evidentiary basis for distrusting our elections altogether, or for concluding that the results do not reflect the ballots that our fellow citizens actually cast.”

Without giving specifics or evidence, Hawley said Wednesday that he would object because “some states, including notably Pennsylvania,” did not follow their own election laws. Some states made changes to their election procedures, such as expanding absentee voting, to accommodate voters during the coronavirus pandemic, the worst U.S. public health emergency in a century. Lawsuits challenging Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania have been unsuccessful.

“At the very least, Congress must (!) investigate the integrity of our elections,” Hawley said in a statement. He also criticized the way Facebook and Twitter handled content related to the election, characterizing it as an effort to help Biden. #HawleyMustResign

Jen Psaki, a spokesperson for the Biden transition team, dismissed Hawley’s move as “antics” that will have no bearing on Biden being sworn in on Jan. 20.

“The American people spoke resoundingly in the 2020, election and 81 million people have voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Psaki said in a call with reporters.

Trump cut short his Florida New Year's vacation to return to Washington D.C., on Thursday, one day earlier than expected, for reasons the White House didn’t explain.

When Congress convenes to certify the Electoral College results, any lawmaker can object to a state’s votes on any grounds. But the objection is not taken up unless it is in writing and signed by both a member of the House and a member of the Senate.

When there is such a request, then the joint session suspends and the House and Senate go into separate sessions to consider it. For the objection to be sustained, both chambers must agree to it by a simple majority vote. If they disagree, the original electoral votes are counted.

As president of the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the Jan. 6, session and declare the winner.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked his caucus not to participate in a futile quest to overturn the results.

A range of nonpartisan election officials and Republicans has confirmed there was no fraud in the November contest that would change the results of the election. That includes former Attorney General William Barr, who said he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel to look into the president’s claims about the 2020 election. He resigned from his post last week.

Trump and his allies have filed roughly 50 lawsuits challenging election results, and nearly all has been dismissed or dropped. He’s also lost twice at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The wrong minded group of House Republicans said it planned to challenge the election results from Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada. All are states that Biden carried.

Aamer Madhani in Chicago, contributed to this report,