House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) pledged to rescind cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act subsidies if Democrats flip the House in November.
Democrats have spent over a year criticizing cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the ACA-enhanced tax credit that expired late last year.
“These cuts were enacted to provide massive tax breaks to billionaire MAGA Republican donors, and that’s why when we’re on the other side of the Nov. 3 general election, one of the first things we will endeavor to undertake is to reverse these painful Medicaid cuts,” Jeffries said at a Tuesday press conference in Buffalo, New York.
The GOP bill, passed last July, beefed up Medicaid work requirements for single, able-bodied adults and cut into Planned Parenthood by stopping Medicaid funds from being allowed to reimburse health clinics that provide abortions. Democrats labeled the legislation the “big, ugly bill,” and have held hundreds of events across the country over the last year to talk about its effects.
“Hands off Medicaid, hands off Medicare, hands off the Affordable Care Act, and hands off the healthcare of the American people,” Jeffries later added.
Democrats aimed to extend the ACA subsidies last year and early this year, but hit a wall in the Senate. Jeffries passed a bill, with the help of a handful of Republicans, that would have extended the subsidies, which expired on Dec. 31 of last year, for three years.
Both parties have been working to define the big, beautiful bill as a central part of their midterm message, something that will continue during their monthlong August recess. Republicans have spent recent months touting the tax cuts in the bill, such as “No Tax On Tips and Overtime,” as they have aimed to rebrand it as the “Working Families Tax Cut.”
DSCC PROGRAM KNOCKS NEARLY 40,000 DONORS TO MARK 100 DAYS FROM MIDTERMS
Democrats have campaigned on their opposition to the bill, focusing particularly on the healthcare aspects of the law, as Jeffries did in Buffalo on Tuesday.
Democrats are favored to reclaim the majority, as the House historically flips to the party out of power in the White House in the midterm elections, but redistricting efforts across the country have reduced the number of competitive seats on the battlefield, and Republicans emerged with a narrow advantage in seats netted through gerrymandering.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
