For The Most Part, They Vote As Extreme As The Worst MAGAts Do
Swing district Republicans like Don Bacon (NE), Mike Lawler (NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Young Kim (CA), Bryan Steil (WI), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Tom Kean (NJ), Maria Salazar (FL), David Valadao (CA), John James (MI), Zach Nunn (IA), Jen Kiggans (VA), Bill Huizenga (MI), Monica De La Cruz (TX) and Nick LaLota (NY) sometimes talk a moderate game for the independent voters back home. But when push comes to shove each one of them could just as well hand their voting card to Marjorie Traitor Greene or any other random MAGAt extremist.
They may rend their garments in front of the media over the radical anti-working class budget that their party just passed out of committee, but no one on Capitol Hill takes their protestations seriously. When the far right threatened to capsize the budget if they didn’t get their way… billions more were cut from the budget to placate them. When the self-styled “moderates,” whine that the cuts are too harsh, everyone just rolls their eyes and, basically, ignores them. The GOP is the reverse Robin Hood party— and that includes all the make believe mainstreamers.
Yesterday, Meredith Hill reported that MAGA Mike does try to assuage their bruised egos though. “On Thursday, as Republican hard-liners celebrated a concession they won from party leaders to force deeper spending cuts as part of the GOP’s sweeping policy push, centrists expressed deep alarm about the trajectory of the massive legislation that will include border security, energy, defense and tax provisions. The emerging fault lines are many: GOP members in high-tax blue states are concerned that the plan doesn’t leave enough room to expand the state and local tax deduction. And Senate Republicans and some House hard-liners aren’t ready to give up on a competing two-bill plan.”
Hill, trying to make it seem like a drama when it isn’t, claimed MAGA Mike’s “most immediate problem comes from swing-district Republicans who believe that the steep spending cuts Johnson wants across Medicaid, food assistance and other safety-net programs for low-income Americans could cost them their seats— and Johnson his razor-thin GOP majority. ‘I don’t know where they’re going to get the cuts,’ said Rep. David Valadao, who represents a heavily Democratic district in central California, as he left the Capitol on Thursday... But with a two-vote majority, Johnson has virtually no room for error. And opposition from members like Valadao could force him and committee chairs to go back to the drawing board. Low-key and soft-spoken, Valadao is the stylistic and ideological opposite of the fire-breathing hard-liners on Johnson’s right flank. His district in California’s Central Valley is one of the six Hispanic-majority GOP seats where more than twenty percent of households receive food aid benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is being targeted under the GOP budget for some $230 billion in spending cuts. ‘Obviously Medicaid and SNAP are ones that I’m very much watching,’ Valadao said.”
The theory is that it looks bad for Republicans to cut Medicaid and food stamps to pay for bigger tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans. The theory might be an actual threat if Democrats had viable leadership that understood how to message effectively. They don’t so… it’s just a theory— and Republicans like Valadao in a D+5 district keep winning anyway, not to mention Republicans in evenly split districts like Salazar, Fitzpatrick and Bacon.
Still, Valadao told Hill he “believes he is speaking for a larger group of House Republicans who are worried about what the cuts will mean for their districts. Johnson’s own Louisiana district has a high rate of households that rely on food assistance, and hospital systems across the country rely on Medicaid revenue to stay in the black. ‘There’s a lot of us, even leadership themselves, I think a lot of their districts are in the same boat as mine or close to it,’ Valadao said.” The DCCC doesn’t run candidates against Johnson. In 2022 and 2024, Johnson had no Democratic opponents at all.
Hill wrote that Valadao is worried about Republicans who want to cut Medicare. Trump “himself has been reticent to approve anything that could be perceived as a cut to health care given the collapse of his prior efforts in that realm back in 2017. Valadao, referring to the major Medicaid reforms that would be required under the House GOP budget plan, said, ‘I think that goes against what he’s said and has been saying to members, both privately and publicly.’” And way out on the extra, House Freedom Caucus members like Ralph Norman (R-SC) are as determined as ever not to just upend Medicaid but to slash and burn Medicare and Social Security. “This is just the first agency. And we’ve got many more to come, like Social Security,” said Norman yesterday.
Nebraska Republican Don Bacon also expressed uneasiness about the potential level of Medicaid cuts that could hit his district, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election.
“Most of us support work requirements for able-bodied adults with no children, and we should make sure it’s not going to people who don’t qualify,” Bacon said.
“Beyond that, President Trump said he was reluctant to see cuts in Medicaid that will impact the most needy,” he added. “His gut instinct is right here.”
If that wasn’t enough, some on the hard right are still suggesting they want further changes to the budget framework before they support it on the House floor.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) on Thursday said he wanted to pursue alterations to the plan over recess, including securing guarantees about “where the cuts are coming from” in specific committees. Asked if he thought GOP leaders were open to additional changes, Ogles replied, “They don’t have the votes, so I think they’re compelled to work with us.” He added that things were trending in “the right direction.”
GOP leaders’ decision to include a $4 trillion debt ceiling hike in the budget blueprint is adding a further complication. Lifting the federal borrowing limit is deeply controversial among Republicans, and several GOP members, including Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have never voted to do so.
Other ultraconservative members are finding reasons to be skeptical. Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he doubted a key economic assumption budget writers used to claim that their plan wouldn’t add to the national debt.
GOP leaders assert that enacting the tax cuts and other measures in the bill will result in 2.6 percent average annual GDP growth— well above the current 1.8 percent projection of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“That in and of itself is extremely optimistic,” Self said. “I was very concerned when I started hearing people saying, ‘Well, we can just grow our way out of this.’”
“We cannot,” he added.
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