'Height of stupidity': GOP advisors slam budget bill as an 'attack on our own voters'

Rolling Stone reports House Democrats can’t wait for U.S. voters to see Republican lawmakers’ “big, beautiful bill” slash[ing] taxes for the rich” and “gut[ting]” the nation’s safety net for the poor.

“It’s pretty clear that the goal here is to make an ugly bill … even uglier, and to accelerate the rate at which this ugliness occurs,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) told Rolling Stone. He said Republicans’ new Medicaid work requirements, for example, will cause “more bureaucracy, more red tape, more excuses to deny people coverage.”

Even one conservative advisor told Rolling Stone the bill will come back to smack Republicans whose constituents heavily rely on Medicaid.

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“Going after fraud in Medicaid is politically popular and worth doing, but going after benefits is an attack on our own voters,” said the anonymous source, who called the bill “the height of stupidity from a political perspective.”

Anthony Wright, executive director at Families USA, told Rolling Stone: “This bill’s intent is to drown Americans in paperwork in order to make it harder to get on and stay on coverage,” in order to “gain … [savings] from people falling off coverage.”

“This is bureaucracy where the bureaucratic barrier is the point,” said Wright.

Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the health policy research organization KFF, told Rolling Stone most able-bodied adults on Medicaid already have jobs.

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The bill is still evolving and much of its detail remains under wraps, but leaders appear careful to plan new Medicaid work requirements to kick in weeks or months after the midterm elections. But other cuts sure to get noticed are lawmakers’ decision to slash federal supplemental funds for hospitals and rural health care providers. This would force Medicaid recipients to pay more out-of-pocket health care costs.

President Donald Trump has vowed many times not to cut Medicaid, but Trump wants to extend his costly 2017 tax cuts, which will blast the nation’s budget in 20 years if lawmakers do not offset that revenue loss with budget cuts. Medicaid is a tempting target because it represents 19 percent of all health spending in the U.S. The nation’s defense budget comprises 13 percent of the entire federal budget, but Republicans are looking to expand the military beyond $1 trillion, not cut it.

Democrats estimate Trump and Republicans’ budget proposal will remove nearly 14 million Americans from their health insurance.

Read the full Rolling Stone report here.

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