“There’s a big difference between the old Republican Party that focused on Wall Street,” said Republican senator Jim Banks of Indiana in a video clip titled “The new GOP is the party of the working class” a couple weeks ago, “and the new Republican Party that focuses more on Main Street and working-class families.”
That party, Banks said, “has to recognize that those mechanics, factory workers like my dad and members of my family, teachers, police officers, people who go to work and make an hourly wage and a working-class living, that has to be the emphasis of the tax cuts this season.” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and many others have made similar statements in their attempt to portray the GOP as a “pro-worker” party and win over more working-class voters.
It’s easy to get jaded about fraud and humbuggery in politics. But the notion of the contemporary Republican Party as champion of the working class is a particularly brazen scam. There’s no better example of why than House Republicans’ gleefully approving the most devastating cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history, alongside a budget gifting the rich with enormous tax cuts.
The House voted 215-214 for the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (You thought that name was just Trump being Trump — actually, it’s the official title.) The legislation is big, but only a misanthropic billionaire could find it beautiful. This budget cuts Medicare spending by nearly $800 billion over the next ten years, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 7.6. million people will lose coverage.
They also added draconian work requirements to the program, although most Medicaid recipients are already working, and those who are not are mostly too disabled or sick to work, are in school, or have caregiving responsibilities. They eliminated gender-affirming care, and in a tour de force of gratuitous cruelty, offered to pay states not to expand their Medicaid…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
