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Pushing Back Against the Big Medicaid Lie

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monday

Democrats were virtually salivating as they unanimously voted against Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill two weeks ago, which certainly should give pause to Republicans as they prepare for the midterms and the 2028 elections beyond.

What gives the Democrats hope that they can campaign effectively against Trump’s mega-bill? Is it the fact that Republicans were able to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts? Are they planning to campaign against the “no tax on tips” provision that even Kamala Harris supported? Will they claim that funding border security and mass deportation of illegal aliens is somehow bad for the country?

No, no, and no. Democrats are not idiots. They know they have the short straw on all of those 80-20 issues. So they are going back to the same issue they have demagogued since 2008 – health care. By tugging on the heartstrings of the American public, they know they can use fear to win votes.

During debate in both the House and Senate, Democrats relied on questionable forward-looking interpretations of the impact of the mega-bill on Medicaid to claim that nearly 12 million low-income people would lose health coverage if the bill passed, as it ultimately did.

The left-leaning Congressional Budget Office supplied some of that data, and by the time the vote was finalized on July 3, various other groups were adding fuel to the fire. KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, added the 12 million who would allegedly lose Medicaid to 5 million people who they claimed would lose coverage on the ACA marketplace to conclude that at least 17 million would be at risk. Then there was the claim that Trump’s budget would deny food stamps to hungry children and pregnant women.

But not so fast. Despite the bleak picture painted by Democrats and weak-kneed RINOs that Trump wanted poor people to just die and be done with it, there........

© RealClearPolitics