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Last month, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that is expected to kick millions of Americans off of Medicaid and other forms of health insurance. The legislation includes over $800 million in cuts to Medicaid spending over the next 10 years, the largest in the program’s history. Now, as Republicans gear up for next year’s midterm elections, vulnerable lawmakers who supported the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” are attempting to recast themselves as protectors of the health care program they sent to the wood chipper.
Last week, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.), and Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) introduced a resolution purporting to recognize the 60th anniversary of Medicaid’s establishment as well as “Congress’ commitment to preserve and strengthen the program for the nation’s most vulnerable populations.”
All three of them voted to kick people off of the program in order to pay for President Donald Trump’s tax boons to billionaires and big business — which is already paying dividends for corporate America.
All three House members are also currently at risk of losing their seats in next year’s elections. According to a June analysis from the Cook Political Report, Miller-Meeks and Evans districts are both rated as Republican toss-ups, while Kean Jr.’s leans Republican. Last month, the National Journal’s Hotline Power Rankings rated Evans the second-most vulnerable member of the House GOP in the country.
The three representatives wrote that “this resolution celebrates the creation of Medicaid as a vital safety net to provide health care to low-income Americans who need it most: pregnant women, children, seniors, and those with disabilities. The resolution calls for Congress’s continued support in eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse to preserve this critical program for today’s recipients and future generations.”
Rep. Miller-Meeks, who represents Iowa’s 1st District, wrote in a statement that “as a physician,” she knows “how critical Medicaid is for women, children, veterans, and disabled Americans.” In Miller-Meeks’ district, 13,000 Medicaid recipients are expected to lose their health care coverage. The cuts are also likely to endanger major medical centers and rural hospitals, often the only connection rural Americans have to the health care system.
Ahead of the bill’s passage, Miller-Meeks was repeatedly confronted by constituents and protesters who urged her to oppose the legislation. She even signed a letter opposing more aggressive cuts in the Senate and decrying that the upper chamber’s addition to the bill could “place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care” — despite having already approved almost $1 trillion in cuts with her own vote.
In Colorado, where nearly 30 percent of the population receives health care coverage through Medicaid, Rep. Evans voted in favor of the cuts despite widespread opposition from his own constituents — 19,000 of whom may lose their Medicaid coverage. In May, as the bill was being crafted in the House, Evans all but stood on a soapbox in front of the Colorado Capitol and declared that he was “proud to support the one Big Beautiful Bill.” He was met with an ongoing chorus of jeers and boos from protesters bringing attention to the proposed Medicaid cuts.
Evans, like many of his GOP colleagues, claimed that the cuts were actually an effort to counter rampant fraud and waste by undeserving recipients of the program — a claim that is contradicted by actual health systems experts.
In response to a request for comment, Evans’ office directed from Rolling Stone to a press release about the resolution in which he stated that “It is paramount that Congress preserve access to this program for those who need it the most by ensuring that states and the federal government implement commonsense policies to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in the system.”
Similarly, Rep. Kean Jr. defended his vote to Rolling Stone in a statement in which he claimed that he “voted to safeguard Medicaid for every intended beneficiary in the Garden State and nationwide. By rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse we are preserving this vital program for today’s recipients and future generations.”
In Kean Jr.’s district, at least 6,000 individuals are expected to lose Medicaid coverage as a result of the legislation, and over 450,000 individuals are at risk throughout the state.
Kean Jr.’s voters are not happy with him, either. A poll released last month by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that even State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions included in the legislation — which Kean Jr., highlighted as an accomplishment in his statement to Rolling Stone, have not managed to eliminate the local backlash to Medicaid cuts. “Overall, 27 percent of likely voters in the state say that they approve of the budget bill,” the survey found.
Kean Jr. was also among the slate of Republicans who — likely on the advice of House leadership and national Republicans — avoided holding in-person town halls to meet with their constituents.
At the end of the day, the three representatives threw their full support behind the most ruthless gutting of a public health care program in the nation’s history, and now — through performative resolutions — are attempting to reframe their actions as a heroic defense of the program they sought to kneecap.
A joint resolution celebrating 60 years of Medicaid might play well for a few press releases, but it won’t provide health care coverage for the almost 40,000 Americans who stand to lose access to the program between their three districts.
