Trump’s big beautiful (Ugly) bill – the one that they had to cobble together in order to ensure that they actually got something done in one act and not relive “infrastructure week” from the first term- is in deep trouble over deep cuts to Medicaid.
As a matter of first principles, the Senate is loaded for the GOP with small white states that are stuffed with sunburnt red people. But when it comes to Medicaid, those small states are uniquely in play because many have rural hospitals that will quite literally be shut down if Medicaid is cut as substantially as the big ugly proposes. To be sure, North Carolina is far from a small state, but it does have a lot of rural areas with those same hospitals that are endangered. And unsurprisingly, the somewhat moderate Republican Senator from North Carolina, Tom Tillis, knows that this is the hill that he and others will die on if the GOP continues to push it.
Politico reports on a closed-door meeting among the GOP Senate Caucus in which Tillis predicted his own defeat if the bill goes through as it currently stands. As Rawstory summarized, Tillis simply won’t go with it until he gets some answers.
Some senators have also pushed back against provisions that are still in the bill, like the hospital providers tax amendment. Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC) told Thune during a meeting on Wednesday that the provision could cost him his seat in the 2026 elections, Politico reported.
“He said…If you proceed on this provider tax like you’re going to do right now, you won’t have a member from North Carolina sitting at this table after next year,” an anonymous source who was in the meeting shared with Politico.
Tillis told colleagues he would not vote to take up the bill without more clarity on the Medicaid changes, the report said.
Tillis must be looking across the Senate and seeing Sen. Warnock and Osoff from Georgia, and thinking to himself that North Carolina is about to take its turn in shading ever bluer – this would be the year that the rural votes on which he so depends will not be a given. North Carolina just elected a blue governor and Supreme Court justice; Tillis could easily be the next to fall.
But he isn’t the only one. Senator Susan Collins is concerned – this time for real, because Maine is equally dependent on those smaller hospitals. It is almost as true for Sen. Husted of Ohio, who may be the real bellwether in terms of a blue avalanche. Throw in Sen. Markowski’s possible defection to Independent status (Caucusing with the Democrats), and you have a sudden lane in which to possibly get to a Blue majority. The Medicaid cuts are not worth losing to be in that lane; too many real people will get hurt. But one knows that the GOP is reckless enough to actually do it – at which point, the only way to “undo” those cuts would be to elect a Democratic Senate majority.
Tillis knows that this is all too realistic a possibility. Talk about something big and beautiful.
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Call Traitor Tillis’ office and scare him in the worst possible way…agree with him that he will lose the next election. And move to the next one.
I keep up a steady flow of disparaging emails to Tillis’ office. I accused him of spending too much time around Susan Collins because he makes a lot of noise about bipartisanship, but he reliably CAVES in the end!
The neat trick that must be achieved now is having Democratic candidates worth voting for.
Or do they just have to not be republicans?