Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel has a weekly newsletter called All Things — “A newsy analysis of the workings of D.C. (and beyond), providing the inside track on both the overhyped and overlooked events of the week.” In this week’s edition she addresses “Big, Beautiful Distortions” in the attacks on the big, beautiful bill that made it out of the House yesterday on its way to President Trump’s desk for signing today. Steven Nelson notes the bill’s passage in the New York Post’s cover story.
Anticipating passage of the bill yesterday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries engaged in a futile and stupid gesture. He “filibustered” the bill with the longest speech in House history (nearly nine hours). He must have hit all the themes Strassel addresses, with helpings of nastiness, pettiness, and nasty pettiness on the side.
Here Strassel addresses the canard that the bill constitutes an attack on the social safety net (emphasis and link in original):
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Repeat and repeat again: Republicans are not cutting spending on Medicaid or food stamps; the House and Senate bills merely slow those programs’ (unsustainable) rate of growth. Republicans accomplish this by implementing modest work requirements for able-bodied adults, by pushing back on a scheme states use to inflate federal Medicaid spending, and by asking states to be more diligent in identifying fraud. Our recent breakdown of the CBO forecast of who would “lose” Medicaid by 2034 shows a population of able-bodied adults who aren’t complying with the work requirement, illegal migrants, and people who qualify for other subsidized coverage.
Whole thing here.
