Josh Hawley: the massive Medcaid cuts I support don’t count as Medicaid cuts

“I had my fingers crossed!”

Feel the Economic Populism (TM)!

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has been clear about his red line as the Senate takes up the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act: no Medicaid cuts.

But what, exactly, would be a cut?

Hawley and other Republicans acknowledge that the main cost-saving provision in the bill – new work requirements on able-bodied adults who receive health care through the Medicaid program — would cause millions of people to lose their coverage. All told, estimates are 10.9 million fewer people would have health coverage under the bill’s proposed changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. That includes some 8 million fewer in the Medicaid program, including 5.2 million dropping off because of the new eligibility requirements.

“I know that will reduce the number of people on Medicaid,” Hawley told a small scrum of reporters in the hallways at the Capitol.

“But I’m for that because I want people who are able bodied but not working to work.”

[Medicaid work requirements just arbitrarily take Medicaid from a lot of people, which is their sole purpose.]

This, incidentally, is why Hawley has introduced a symbolic minimum wage increase bill with one co-sponsor after an extensive record of opposing both state and federal minimum wage increases: so he can cultivate his reputation as an “economic populist” with the most gullible rubes in the country while he votes to take healthcare away from millions of people to partially pay for upper-class tax cuts.