In 2018, Democrats reclaimed the House and flipped through 41 seats, including conservative locations like Utah suburbs and Oklahoma, focusing on a single issue: the Affordable Care Act, a Republican effort to overturn popular healthcare programs.
Now, Democrats are looking at an opening to use the same strategy to cover massive tax cuts, as Republicans push budget resolutions through Congress and almost certainly need some kind of cut for Medicaid.
“I don't know why Republicans are doubling the same playbook,” said Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, who served as chairman of the House Democrats' campaign division in 2018.
“City halls, people are coming forward, appearing in communities across the US, filling the phone lines here in Washington, DC,” Luhan continued.
In the early weeks of President Trump's second term, Democrats strive to select their political targets in an almost day-long barrage of Elon Musk's government efficiency executive orders and moves to fire and dismantle federal programs and fire officials. But the prospect of a cut to Medicaid covering more than 70 million Americans sees a clear issue that they hope to help capture the same kind of energy that brought them back to power in 2018.
“The Americans were upset in 2005 when Republicans tried to privatize Social Security. Democrat leader Haquem Jeffries of New York said he cited two campaign cycles that cited House control under a Republican president, citing two campaign cycles that cited Republican healthcare, including the communities I represent, and enacted the biggest Medicaid cuts in our country's history.”
He said he would continue to attack the “clear contrasts” Democrats have highlighted for their biggest political advantage in the past.
They've already put the money behind the message. The House Democrats' Political Action Committee announced Friday that they purchased advertising time in more than 20 districts across the country.
“They insisted they would cut costs,” the narrator says. “Instead, Trump and Chairman Johnson will be chasing millions of people out of health insurance.”
In 2017, protesters flocked Republican town halls across the country, urging lawmakers not to vote to replace the Affordable Care Act.
“When it comes to healthcare, all politics is personal,” said Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the day after her party reclaimed her home in 2018. “We created our own environment. GOP tried relentlessly to split up and distract, but the candidates kept their focus on the subject.”
A similar scene has been unfolding recently as lawmakers are being forced onto their members within the scope of Trump's budget cuts. In both cases, Republicans dismissed the protest as being coordinated by a group of liberal activists, claiming that the protest was not representative of average voter sentiment.
Still, Republicans who witnessed some of the backlash firsthand have already warned their colleagues to adjust their message.
Georgia president Rich McCormick was screaming at him at the town hall recently, shouting Ziel and Boo.
“There's a message about Medicaid, saving Medicare,” McCormick said, referring to Trump's promise not to touch on either program. “But you can lose that message with one attitude, and if there is nothing else, we need to be aware of how we are sending this to the message.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the Republicans who ultimately opposed the efforts to abolish it, said she saw similarities between her 2017 push and her Medicaid cut attempt.
“When I was trying to explain to my colleagues how Alaska had a disproportionate impact, I feel like we're back in the ACA era,” Murkowski said.
House Republicans have yet to write laws laying out specific spending cuts and tax cuts to meet budget plans. Speaker Mike Johnson recently claimed he wanted to find “efficiency” with Medicaid.
“For example, for single mothers with two small children trying to make it, they don't want healthy workers in the intended program,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN. “That's what Medicaid is about. It's not for a 29-year-old man sitting on a sofa playing video games.”
He said Republicans will not fundamentally change the structure of the program, as some conservatives have long proposed, and will not establish a cap on federal funds for Medicaid.
Many Republicans are used to establishing program work requirements, but the changes are estimated to save only about $100 billion. The House Republican budget plan requires committees overseeing Medicaid and Medicare to find more than eight times their savings.
Even among Republicans, reaching that number is very politically plaguing. And as many states are expanding their Medicaid programs under Affordable Care Act, doing so could affect the wider population of states across the country.
“I'm not going to vote for Medicaid cuts,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, who was elected in 2018. “The job requirements are fine, but 21% of my state's residents will receive Medicaid or tips,” he said.
One Republican who will almost certainly be squeezed in the process is California's representative David Valadao, who represents a district where nearly two in three rely on Medicaid.
Since he was elected to Congress in 2012, he has been re-elected in all but one cycles in 2018.
Before he voted to approve the GOP budget resolution this week, Valadao rose to the House floor to resolve potential cuts interests and gave his party leader a warning. He said it had achieved a $880 billion budget cut, “it's not an easy task.”
“I've heard from countless constituents who have said that the only way you can afford healthcare is through programs like Medicaid,” continued Valadao.
“Medicaid cuts” are “deeply unpopular with the American family who sent us here to take over President Trump's agenda,” he said.
