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David Cordell
From tomorrow's Wall Street Journal
No One is ‘Gutting’ the Safety Net
The GOP will have to rebut the Democratic and media distortions about their reforms or lose the 2026 election.
By The Editorial Board - The Wall Street Journal.
Democrats and their media collaborators always distort GOP policy, but the coverage about the big budget bill has kicked free of the earth. Allow us to temper the histrionics about “gutting the social safety net” with a few facts about Medicaid, food stamps and Republican priorities.
By now you’ve seen the headline in every outlet: The Republican law will soon toss millions from Medicaid and cut the program to the bone. But annual spending on the health entitlement will grow over the next decade even with the bill’s roughly $1 trillion in estimated savings. Medicaid spending has risen by roughly 60% since 2019, and the bill’s intent is to try to bend Medicaid’s trajectory closer to the bad old days of 2020.
Democrats and some Republicans have offered cynical distortions that pregnant women in poverty and disabled children will suffer. But Republicans are trying to address the program’s enormous ObamaCare expansion to prime-age adults above the poverty line, and note the details of those who will allegedly lose coverage.
CBO, in an letter last month about the House bill, said 4.8 million won’t comply with the bill’s part-time work requirement. That should be a warning about the country’s social condition. The work requirement doesn’t apply to anyone who is disabled, pregnant or caring for a child younger than age 14. Volunteering 20 hours a week or enrolled in school? You can get Medicaid.
Don’t buy the Democratic talking point that the working poor will be lost in red tape as they try to prove they’re on the job. States have handled work requirements in food stamps and cash assistance for decades.
As the Foundation for Government Accountability notes, when Arkansas experimented with such requirements in Medicaid, “enrollees only had to report work once, and it was easy to do so.” The state cross-referenced wage and employment data and folks could also self-attest online or call a hot line. The Democratic position is that Medicaid should be a free universal benefit for men who refuse to work.
The other main provision is tamping down state scams to hoover up more federal dollars. The main losers here are large hospital systems that have been doing well on the largesse.
The GOP bill also includes sensible measures such as asking states to check their Medicaid expansion rolls every six months and more scrutiny on ObamaCare subsidies. That is necessary because the Biden Administration waved millions onto health entitlements. The Paragon Institute estimates that 6.4 million people are enrolled in fully subsidized ObamaCare plans but don’t meet the eligibility criteria. Apparently this is what Democrats support.
The bill’s changes to food stamps are also modest and rooted in the tenet that work is central to upward mobility. As a refresher, the program currently requires able-bodied adults without dependents to work about 20 hours a week—or lose benefits after three months. That 90-day dispensation allows those who suffer a setback time to get back on their feet.
But here is the not at all radical reform proposition: More of those who rely on benefits for longer need to be working. The GOP bill would expand the current work requirement to cover more able-bodied adults, including some parents with older children in school and those in their 50s and early 60s. The law also tries to tighten up waivers that states have abused to eliminate the work rules. The other major change is asking states with high improper payment rates to have skin in the game and pick up a share of benefit costs, which are currently billed 100% to the federal taxpayer.
These are common-sense ideas that have public support, though most voters aren’t hearing a defense from Republicans. Here is the abiding lesson for the GOP: Ducking the hardest reforms, public groveling, the bill’s eleventh-hour $50 billion blowout for rural hospitals—none of it will stop dishonest Democratic attacks. There is no substitute for defending your own ideas.
Democrats think they can ride the Medicaid scare into a midterm victory, but there’s still time for the GOP to lay out the facts. Roughly a quarter of Americans are on Medicaid, which is worse than private insurance. Food aid tops $100 billion a year and no longer shrinks as it once did when the economy is growing.
America is a generous society that cares for the vulnerable. But it should also be a land of opportunity, not a European welfare state.
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