With a crucial week looming in the House, the G.O.P. is groping for ways to achieve savings without provoking a political backlash. It’s a little tricky.
House Republicans face a fundamental problem as they reach a critical phase in crafting their “one big, beautiful bill” to enact President Trump’s agenda. They want to slice deeply into federal programs without acknowledging that they are doing any meaningful damage to their constituents or states.
This vexing situation arises from the natural tension between the conservative determination to roll back federal spending and the tendency of politicians to want to keep their jobs. Doing the former can work against the latter.
That explains the verbal gymnastics that Republicans are performing this week to assert that their legislation would not really take anything away from Americans who are supposed to get it. They need, essentially, to find a way to cut huge sums from Medicaid without looking as if they are taking a hatchet to the government health program for the poor.
Not only are their own political futures and control of the House at risk, but they also do not want to antagonize President Trump. He has made it clear that he has no desire whatsoever to see a headline that says “Trump, Republicans Cut Medicaid,” though he also wants sweeping — and costly — legislation encapsulating his agenda of cutting taxes.
To meet these competing demands, Republicans insist they are going to make certain that only the “rightful” beneficiaries of assistance from programs like Medicaid and nutrition assistance continue to receive them — though “rightful” can be a subjective term. Their Medicaid proposal released late Sunday avoids some of the most drastic — and easily attacked — cuts while still imposing new requirements and costs on beneficiaries that the Congressional Budget Office said would eliminate federal health insurance for nearly nine million people and make it less affordable for millions more.
Republicans say they are going to shore up federal aid programs by ending “waste, fraud and abuse,” by checking eligibility more carefully and by making sure undocumented immigrants aren’t getting help they don’t merit — all without cutting off assistance to a single eligible person. In addition, able-bodied recipients will need to get to work.