Last month, Mariannette Miller-Meeks cast a key vote for the Big, Ugly Law that guts Medicaid, rips away health care from Iowans, and raises their costs – all to give tax cuts to billionaires.
Now, Miller-Meeks is trying to cover her tracks through a phony, meaningless resolution on the anniversary of Medicaid and her commitment to “preserve and strengthen” “the health care program [she] sent to the wood chipper.”
Newsflash: Miller-Meeks herself voted for the largest Medicaid cuts in history that will take health care away from Iowans who depend on it.
DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Mariannette Miller-Meeks has so little respect for her constituents she thinks that a meaningless resolution will make them forget she voted to gut Medicaid, rip their health care away, and raise their health care costs. Iowans won’t buy this phony attempt to cover her tracks – Miller-Meeks will lose next November.”
Read more:
Rolling Stone: Vulnerable Republicans Are Claiming They Love Medicaid After Voting to Gut It
Three House members authored a resolution recognizing the health care program’s anniversary. They all voted to take it away from thousands of their constituents
- Last month, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that is expected to kick millions of Americans off of Medicaid and other forms of health insurance.
- The legislation includes over $800 [billion] in cuts to Medicaid spending over the next 10 years, the largest in the program’s history. Now, as Republicans gear up for next year’s midterm elections, vulnerable lawmakers who supported the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” are attempting to recast themselves as protectors of the health care program they sent to the wood chipper.
- Last week, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.), and Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) introduced a resolution purporting to recognize the 60th anniversary of Medicaid’s establishment as well as “Congress’s commitment to preserve and strengthen the program for the nation’s most vulnerable populations.”
- All three of them voted to kick people off of the program in order to pay for President Donald Trump’s tax boons to billionaires and big business — which is already paying dividends for corporate America.
- All three House members are also currently at risk of losing their seats in next year’s elections. According to a June analysis from the Cook Political Report, Miller-Meeks and Evans districts are both rated as Republican toss-ups, while Kean Jr.’s leans Republican.
- The three representatives wrote that “this resolution celebrates the creation of Medicaid as a vital safety net to provide health care to low-income Americans who need it most: pregnant women, children, seniors, and those with disabilities. The resolution calls for Congress’s continued support in eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse to preserve this critical program for today’s recipients and future generations.”
- In Miller-Meeks’ district, 13,000 Medicaid recipients are expected to lose their health care coverage. The cuts are also likely to endanger major medical centers and rural hospitals, often the only connection rural Americans have to the health care system.
- Ahead of the bill’s passage, Miller-Meeks was repeatedly confronted by constituents and protesters who urged her to oppose the legislation. She even signed a letter opposing more aggressive cuts in the Senate and decrying that the upper chamber’s addition to the bill could “place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care” — despite having already approved almost $1 trillion in cuts with her own vote.
- At the end of the day, the three representatives threw their full support behind the most ruthless gutting of a public health care program in the nation’s history, and now — through performative resolutions — are attempting to reframe their actions as a heroic defense of the program they sought to kneecap.
- A joint resolution celebrating 60 years of Medicaid might play well for a few press releases, but it won’t provide health care coverage for the almost 40,000 Americans who stand to lose access to the program between their three districts.
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