House Republicans Have A Plan For The Midterms: Lie About The Cuts To Medicaid And Food Stamps

Derrick Van Orden Tests Out The Ground On Right-Wing Podcasts

Not gonna happen

House Republican leadership has told their members to go out and campaign on their Big Ugly Bill and talk about it as though there are no cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and that it helps everyone, not just the very wealthy. Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) is a notorious drunk and he must have downed a stiff one to start going on right-wing podcasts and mouthing all the lies, counting on the GOP’s base penchant for swallowing them and their inability to read or even think for themselves. Yesterday, Jennifer Bendery reported that Van Orden “says Republicans aren’t actually cutting anyone’s federal health or food benefits in President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax bill— a plan that slashes $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance programs. “I want to be super clear: When these Democrats have been lying to you, saying we’re cutting Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP benefits, that we’re going to cut all of these other programs— they’re lying,’ Van Orden said Thursday on a Wisconsin-based podcast, The Meg Ellefson Show on WSAU. ‘We did this early enough so that folks are going to understand that we’re telling the truth. It’s fantastic,’ said Van Orden. ‘I want anybody in my district to call me if their benefits have been dropped by a nickel. Not gonna happen.’”

Bendery scratched her head, noting that the GOP’s tax-and-spend bill “represents the largest upward transfer of wealth in U.S. history. It cuts $1 trillion from federal health and food programs to help pay for $4 trillion in new tax cuts to rich people. The effects of this bill, if it became law, would be devastating for millions of low-income people who rely on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamps program. The bill would kick an estimated 8 million people off of health insurance [and] the bill’s expanded work requirements for SNAP would result in an estimated 1.5 million families losing all food benefits and 1.2 million families losing some… Those numbers include an estimated 48,000 children who would lose food assistance entirely, and 1.5 million children who would get fewer benefits. An estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts the number of people losing some or all food benefits at more than 3 million. 

In Van Orden’s own community, Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, about 152,900 people— or 21% of the district— depend on Medicaid for health coverage… Approximately 50,000 of the Medicaid enrollees in Van Orden’s district are children, and 21,600 are seniors. More than 20,000 are people with disabilities. Nearly  1.3 million people in Van Orden’s state are enrolled in Medicaid.

Thousands of people in his district rely on SNAP benefits, too. The GOP tax bill puts about 8,000 adults in Van Orden’s district at risk of losing all food assistance, and about 16,000 people at risk of losing at least some food benefits… These figures include thousands of people who live with school-aged children.

… In another Thursday interview on another MAGA-aligned podcast, The John Fredericks Show, Van Orden celebrated the bill’s passage and somehow claimed it was proof Republicans delivered on a campaign promise to protect federal health programs.

“We campaigned on protecting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, securing the border, making sure veterans have their benefits. We did it,” the Wisconsin Republican says around the 45-minute mark. “We. Did. What. We. Campaigned on. And I’m so super stoked for being a part of this process.”

Don’t expect to ever hear Van Orden— drunk or sober— on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Before passage, Klein dubbed the GOP budget Trump’s Big Budget Bomb. He wrote that “According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget— Washington’s saddest advocacy group— if you take seriously the permanence the Republicans are actually seeking, the Big Budget Bomb will add about $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. That is an insane number. Do you remember when Trump promised to balance the budget? What is it trying to accomplish? Five trillion dollars is a lot of debt, but if it would lead us to invent commercialized nuclear fusion or perfect a drug that would double our healthy life span, then fine. It’s worth it. But here’s what this bill does in the real world: It cuts taxes mostly for richer people. It cuts Medicaid and food stamps. Republicans are also allowing some Obamacare subsidies to expire. And so the estimate is that between all this, 13 million people will lose health insurance. It’s also grimly exact. The bill has $1.1 trillion in tax cuts for people who make more than $500,000 a year. And it has $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. It is a straight transfer from people who cannot afford food and medical care to people who can afford to fly first class. The bill also guts the tax credits that support the wind, solar, electric vehicle and nuclear power industries. China will be thrilled by that.”

Klein also notes that the bill “increases the risk any of us face if we can’t afford health care or food for our families. It guts the safety net that millions of us would have relied on for help if Trump’s tariffs were to cause a recession… I’ve been a policy journalist for more than 20 years. I’ve covered more bills than I can count. I cannot remember a more cruel or irresponsible piece of domestic legislation that has been seriously proposed.”

Instead of Van Orden, his guest was economist Catherine Rampell. She summed up the bill like this: “a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, from the young to the old and from the future to the past… [I]f you look at the overall bill, it’s not only that the rich will benefit more, it’s that the poor come out behind. Because, to the extent that any of this is paid for at all, it’s largely paid for by taking other benefits away from low-income people. Medicaid and food stamps are the biggies here. Medicaid currently enrolls something like one in five Americans. It’s a huge program. It’s a popular program. Republicans have argued that their changes are only about kicking off the ‘freeloaders’ and apocryphal ‘welfare queens’ and will make sure that everyone who is deserving of this public health insurance program continues to receive it. But if you actually look at the provisions themselves, that seems very unlikely… Just as an aside: There are Republicans in the House who very narrowly won their elections last year by fewer votes than the number of people who are on Medicaid in their districts. Besides the human cost of all of this, politically it seems pretty dumb to me because while there is maybe a stereotype of the typical food stamp recipient or the typical Medicaid recipient— a stereotype that’s racialized among other things— people from all walks of life go through periods where they need this assistance. Many of them are Republicans. Many of them live in districts that are currently represented by Republicans. And at some point, people are going to notice when they can’t put food on the table or they can’t get the inhaler for their kid.”

Last cycle, Van Orden was lucky enough to run against a very conservative Blue Dog Democrat. He’s basically worthless and many Democrats stayed home rather than vote for her.

Van Orden won by 11,256 votes— in a district with 152,900 Medicaid enrollees. On top of that, as we saw above, the bill puts about 8,000 adults in Van Orden’s district at risk of losing all food assistance, and about 16,000 people at risk of losing at least some food benefit. And there’s a good chance that instead of Cooke, Van Orden will be running against Emily Berge, the progressive City Council president of Eau Claire, an excellent candidate.

This morning she told us that “Van Orden can lie on every podcast he finds, but the truth is simple: this bill rips food and health care from families, just to hand billions to the ultra-rich. In western Wisconsin, we know the difference between taking care of your neighbors and selling them out. This isn’t leadership, it’s a betrayal of the people he was elected to serve.”

I want to urge DWT readers during this Memorial Day weekend to consider contributing what you can to Emily Berge and other candidates making a principled and courageous stand against Trump allies, apologists and enablers in Congress, like Derrick Van Orden.