👀 “Instead of defending budget bill, GOP touts one that doesn’t exist” [Washington Post]

The Republican plan to fix the loss of confidence from the American people?

Lie. 

A new column reveals how Republicans have resorted to fabricating components of their Big, Ugly Bill to sell it to the public as the U.S. Senate explores more aggressive cuts to Medicaid and other key programs.

“So how are Republicans responding? Not by defending their agenda on its merits, but by lying about or misrepresenting what they plan to do,” Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post writes.

Read more from the Washington Post below.

• If you don’t have anything nice to say, just make something up instead.
• That’s the strategy Republican politicians have adopted in hopes of selling their regressive, unpopular budget bill to voters, as an even harsher version of the legislation now makes its way through the Senate.
• The One Big Beautiful Bill is already deeply underwater, voter-wise. Multiple polls now show that about twice as many Americans oppose the bill as support it. This should not be a surprise, given that this legislation is effectively a mash-up of multiple past GOP initiatives that, individually, had each been among the worst-polling major bills in recent history.
• Cruel, unpopular ideas from Republicans are a political gift to Democrats, of course. So how are Republicans responding? Not by defending their agenda on its merits, but by lying about or misrepresenting what they plan to do.
• Elsewhere, some promotional campaigns for the bill wholly fabricate more palatable things the legislation doesn’t do.
• For example, a national ad campaign from a GOP-aligned 501(c)(4) organization suggests the bill cuts taxes on Social Security benefits. Trump did promise to do so on the campaign trail, but it’s nowhere in this bill. (Senate parliamentary rules make it hard to touch Social Security if lawmakers want to pass legislation with a slim margin, as Republicans are attempting.)
• People can reasonably disagree about whether it’s wise to gut the social safety net in service of trillions of dollars’ worth of tax cuts. But Republicans should defend that agenda, rather than singing the praises of a bill that doesn’t exist.

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