As the Senate moves forward with plans to vote on the party’s domestic policy megabill — the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act — there are a handful of GOP members who haven’t said yet how they intend to vote on the legislation. Take Sen. Thom Tillis, for example.
As NBC News reported, the North Carolina Republican this week circulated a document to his GOP colleagues during a closed-door meeting “outlining how the Medicaid provisions in their sweeping domestic policy bill could hurt states, particularly red ones.” Tillis’ concerns are rooted in reality: His party’s proposed reconciliation package intends to impose brutal cuts to the Medicaid program, and GOP strongholds are among the states poised to suffer most.
At the same intraparty meeting, according to Punchbowl News, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader, gave a short speech saying “failure is not an option” on the bill, before reportedly adding, “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it.”
As NOTUS reported soon after, Democrats wasted no time in pouncing on the apparent rhetoric.
‘That’s apparently the closing message from Senate Republicans before they vote to take away health care from millions of Americans — all to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Unbelievable,’ Sen. Chris Van Hollen wrote on X. ‘These Medicaid cuts will kick 16 million Americans off their health care, close rural hospitals—forcing people to drive hours just to see their doctor—and gut funding for long term care for our seniors. No Sen McConnell, our people will not ‘get over it,’’ Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear wrote.
There’s no recording of McConnell’s comment at the meeting, so it’s impossible to get a sense of the context, but the Kentucky Republican’s office hasn’t denied that he said it. Rather, a McConnell spokesperson told Punchbowl that the senator “was speaking about the people who are abusing Medicaid — the able-bodied Americans who should be working.”
Or put another way, the party is cutting Medicaid, despite protestations to the contrary, and the Americans who will lose their health security are just freeloaders who’ll simply “get over it.”
These developments come roughly a month after Sen. Joni Ernst tried to defend her party’s far-right bill after one of her constituents said that people would die as a result of GOP health care cuts. It was at that point when the Iowa Republican said, “Well, we are all going to die” — a line she proceeded to defend as her comment generated a national controversy.
The parallels were not lost on Democrats. “‘They’ll get over it’ ‘We are all going to die,’” Sen. Ruben Gallego wrote online. “Republicans don’t care if you die as long as they get their billionaire tax cuts.” McConnell, it’s worth emphasizing, has said he’ll retire next year after a lengthy career on Capitol Hill, which means he need not worry about facing a backlash from voters. Tillis, however, will be on the 2026 ballot, as will some of his Republican colleagues, as well as every member of the GOP-led House. If these lawmakers work from the assumption that the American public will “get over” health care cuts to fund tax breaks for the wealthy, they are taking an enormous risk with their own careers, among other things.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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