Will GOP "Moderates" Stand Up For Working Class Constituents?
Polling has been pretty consistent: Americans think the super-rich should pay their fair of taxes. Week after Trump’s win last November, Hibba Meraay reported that “Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans support taxing the rich. While these individual polls have been important indicators of public opinion, in a first of its kind report the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute has aggregated those polling results into a systematic analysis. The result is an even stronger case for critical reforms of the American tax code. This report compiles undeniable evidence that the American people are ready to increase taxes on the wealthy. This is true across race, zip code, and even political affiliations. The six types of tax policy proposals discussed in this report are supported by a majority of Democrats and Independents, and quite a few Republicans as well… A billionaire income tax garnered the most support across party identification. On average, two out of three (67 percent) Americans supported the tax including 84 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents, and 51 percent of Republicans. In national polls, a wealth tax had similarly high levels of support. More than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of Independents, and 51 percent of Republicans. State polls on the wealth tax sampled more moderate and conservative voters and show overall high levels of support with slightly less support from Independents and Republicans.”
Does it surprise you that so many self-identified Republicans support taxing billionaires? They sure don’t vote that way even they do tell pollsters they feel that way. And most of their representatives in Congress don’t feel that way at all. Quite the contrary; Republicans in Congress want to lower tax rates of the very rich.
Yesterday, Bill House reported that “a quiet rebellion among Republicans representing working-class and low-income areas against Trump’s legislative agenda has picked up some powerful new allies: US hospitals and conservative agitator Steve Bannon. The party’s leaders have worked to placate budget hawks and Republicans in high-tax and high-income areas who have dominated the GOP debate over the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and the corresponding cost-cutting crusade led by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s most prominent adviser. Now the party’s biggest target— the Medicaid health-care system that insures 72 million low income and disabled people— threatens Trump’s agenda in a House where only a few Republican defectors could sink it.
He noted that, although Bannon would like to end social safety net programs like Medicare, he’s savvy enough politically to know Republicans cannot do it. He’s “emerged as Musk’s loudest conservative critic, warned Republicans against taking a ‘meat ax’ to the program to pay for Trump’s priorities. ‘Medicaid, you gotta be careful,’ Bannon said on his Thursday podcast. ‘Because a lot of MAGAs are on Medicaid, I’m telling you. If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong.’ But the House Republicans’ budget blueprint unveiled this week would indeed slash Medicaid, directing the committee that oversees the program to find at least $880 billion worth of spending cuts over the next decade. Those cuts— if all directed at Medicaid— would account for about 10% of annual funding for it and threaten to affect state budgets, hospital finances and individual benefits.”
The American Hospital Association, whose political action committee spent some $1.8 million in the 2024 election cycle, on Friday implored Congress to reject those cuts. [They donate to both parties but the number # 1 recipient for the cycle was GOP’s NRCC.]
“Medicaid provides health care to many of our most vulnerable populations, including pregnant women, children, the elderly, disabled and many of our working class,” the organization, which represents nearly 5,000 hospitals and healthcare systems, said in a statement.
In total, Republicans are seeking at least $2 trillion in spending cuts in their budget plan, and social safety-net programs would bear the brunt. The Agriculture Committee, which oversees food aid programs, would cut $230 million, and the Education Committee would slash spending by some $330 million.
Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick pleaded with his colleagues recently to protect their working-class and low-income constituents as Musk scoured the federal budget for savings.
The Pennsylvania lawmaker, who represents economically diverse Bucks County, is one of about a dozen House Republicans urging the party to protect Medicaid, food aid and other social safety-net programs.
“It’s laudable to want to cut out fraud, waste and abuse, to cut out fat, eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies in the system,” Fitzpatrick recalled telling his colleagues behind closed doors. “But we still need to make sure that we maintain a social safety net for the people that need it. That’s becoming of American values.”
About 14.5% of Fitzpatrick’s constituents are on Medicaid, significantly lower than the 23.6% US average, according to a database by the New York University Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health. But the politically competitive district includes economically distressed pockets, and health care is among its largest employers.
Further north in the state, representing an area that includes the shuttered coal mines around Hazelton and old industrial towns of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Republican Representative Rob Bresnahan broadly warned against cuts to social programs. Roughly 27.4% of his constituents are on Medicaid, about 4 points above the national average.
“If a bill is put in front of me that guts the benefits my neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it,” Bresnahan said Friday on Twitter.
Other Republicans are quietly making similar arguments directly to House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Their concerns echo Bannon’s: The party risks abandoning the same base of voters that elected Trump and won them a majority in both chambers of Congress.
Indeed, in Johnson’s own solidly Republican district surrounding Shreveport, more than 37% of the population is on Medicaid.
Representative Nicole Malliotakis, who represents New York’s Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, said she hopes Republican leaders weigh the effects of any cuts to Medicaid.
She’s particularly concerned about potential changes to the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, the rate at which the federal government pays states for Medicaid, based on per-capita income. Tweaking those calculations could disproportionately affect New York. Nearly 33% of her constituents are Medicaid recipients.
Republicans must be careful not to “go with a sledgehammer and gut a program that is very important to people I represent, and people across the country,” she said.
Johnson supports setting work requirements for Medicaid, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would save $109 billion over 10 years. But that gives Republicans only about an eighth of the savings they need.
Johnson and others have also painted Medicaid as a program rife with waste, fraud and abuse. They have not provided specific examples and it’s unlikely there’s enough wrongful or wasteful spending to hit the threshold for cuts without eliminating services.
William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the cost-cutting targets would almost certainly require significantly scaling back Medicaid coverage, as well as other bedrock programs such as food assistance for low-income Americans.
There is no disagreement from Malliotakis that that some savings can be found in attacking fraud, waste and abuse.
“I just need to get more clarity” of what will be cut, she said.
Yesterday, on This Week, Hakeem Jeffries said that “Republicans have consistently shut down the government in the past. It would be no surprise if they do just that this time around.” He and other Democrats indicated that their party will not come to the GOP’s aid if their own members sabotage their budget legislation. The legislation has gone so far right to placate members of the Freedom Caucus that mainstream Republicans are having a hard time coming around to supporting it. Most of them, though, are afraid of Trump and Musk and I don’t see any of them actually sinking the bill when it comes to a vote— maybe Fitzpatrick, but certainly not Malliotakis or other vaguely mainstreams conservatives like Tom Kean (NJ), Juan Ciscomani (AZ), Mike Lawler (NY), Jen Kiggans (VA), Young Kim (CA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Don Bacon (NE), David Valadao (CA), Zach Nunn (IA), John James (MI), Monica De La Cruz (TX), Bill Huizenga (MI)… Yep, they’re all more afraid Trump’s bullying and Musk’s wallet than they re of their own constituents.
When push comes to shove will the GOP pick healthcare or lower taxes for wealthy? We all know that if history is any guide, congressional Republicans will choose tax cuts for the wealthy— every single time. The GOP’s entire economic agenda is built on the foundation of redistributing wealth upward— masking it as "fiscal responsibility" while slashing services that millions of working-class Americans, including their own voters, rely on. Even now, as a handful of Republicans timidly raise concerns about gutting Medicaid, the reality is that they’ll fold when it matters. Fitzpatrick might make noise, Bresnahan might tweet, but when MAGA Mike and Trump’s enforcers twist arms, they’ll fall in line. After all, this is the same Republican Party that voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times, even when it was clear that doing so would strip health care from millions.
And the GOP’s billionaire donors aren’t going to tolerate dissent. Musk, who fancies himself the de facto head of the party, is demanding deep cuts. The Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, and the rest of the right-wing donor class expect nothing less than a full dismantling of the social safety net. Medicaid, food aid, education funding— these programs must be sacrificed, in their view, to fund more tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
The only real question is whether Republican voters will finally notice they’re being scammed. The polling is clear: the American public— including a majority of Republicans— wants the wealthy to pay more in taxes, not less. They don’t want their health care slashed. But time and again, they elect politicians who do exactly that. Maybe Bannon is right— maybe gutting Medicaid would be a step too far, even for Trump’s cult. But don’t count on it. Because when push comes to shove, today’s Republican Party is owned by billionaires, and their wallets speak louder than any working-class voter ever could.
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