On April 10 in an effort to advance President Trump’s agenda, House Republicans narrowly passed a budget resolution aimed at tax cuts, border security, and military spending. Hard-line conservatives, led by House Freedom Caucus members like Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), demanded deep cuts to Medicaid to rein in bloated entitlements.
But that didn’t land so well with the RINOs. On April 16, twelve GOP moderates sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) threatening to tank the upcoming reconciliation bill if it slashes Medicaid.
With the GOP once again divided, conservatives now brace for a high-stakes showdown as committees go to war over the bill’s details.
“Is the House actually trying to eat itself alive, or is this just how things are done in D.C.?” asks “Blaze News Tonight” host Jill Savage.
“It’s kind of both,” says Blaze News senior politics editor and Washington correspondent Christopher Bedford.
“The way things are done is a lot of circular firing squads and eating their own, but at the end of the day, different congressmen come from different districts with different voter backgrounds and different needs, and some of those congressmen are going to be more responsive to liberal voters, less able to be Chip Roys on these sorts of matters,” he explains.
The dissenting letter, he thinks, was “more of a warning shot than a ‘we will not work with you’” declaration.
“Generally speaking, there’s no bigger wimp than a moderate Republican. … At the end of the day they derive their power from their closeness to Republican leadership, so if Republican leadership whispers no and barrels ahead, they almost without fail will break,” says Bedford.
Blaze News editor in chief Matthew Peterson then raises a key question: How does the GOP reconcile Trump and Johnson’s former promises to protect or improve Medicaid given the budget resolution’s massive cut targets?
“It’s murky,” says Bedford, addressing Medicaid’s fate. “You have President Trump saying it’s not going to get touched; you have conservative fiscal hawks saying it needs to absolutely get touched; and you have Mike Johnson who says yes to everyone in town.”
While “it’s still all behind-closed-doors negotiations,” hopefully GOP leaders can at least work toward a Medicaid goal nobody should oppose: targeting fraud, abuse, and inefficiencies in Medicaid.
To hear more of the panel’s analysis, watch the clip above.
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