Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is warning against his own party’s efforts to cut Medicaid spending, just hours after House Republicans unveiled legislation that could save billions of dollars while causing millions of people to lose health insurance coverage.
In an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times, Hawley wrote that paying for President Trump’s domestic agenda by cutting health care for the working poor “is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
“Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid,” Hawley said in her letter. “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.”
Hawley has consistently voiced his opposition to the House’s plan to fund the party-line megabill through Medicaid cuts. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been tasked with identifying at least $880 billion in federal spending reductions over the next decade.
Missouri is one of several red states that have expanded Medicaid. Despite his longstanding opposition to ObamaCare, Hawley has stated that he will protect Medicaid access in his state and will not support legislation that would result in benefit cuts for Missourians.
“Republicans need to realize that our voters support social insurance programs. More importantly, our voters rely on these programs,” Hawley wrote.
Hawley’s opposition is a clear indication of the difficult road ahead for the House bill in the Senate. Republicans have a slim majority in the upper chamber, and several GOP senators have shown little interest in navigating the political minefield of Medicaid reform.
House Republicans have considered imposing per capita caps on expansion states such as Missouri. However, the legislation unveiled late Sunday did not include that policy, nor another contentious change that would have directly reduced federal payments to Medicaid expansion states.
Instead, the bill’s provisions would force states to make difficult decisions about how to fund Medicaid, such as cutting benefits or raising taxes.
According to a preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis released by Democrats, if the Republican legislation’s Medicaid and other health provisions go into effect, more than 8.5 million people will lose their health insurance.
Without going into detail about the bill, Hawley stated that “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.”
Both the Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee are planning marathon sessions on Tuesday that will most likely last until Wednesday to advance their respective portions of the bill.
“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,” Hawley tweeted.
