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We understand that it is hard to defend the “big beautiful bill” that was passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would take Medicaid benefits from millions of Americans, slash food aid and make higher education more expensive while extending trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It would also open the door to more oil and gas drilling while ending many clean energy tax breaks, make it harder to hold the federal government accountable, and it may even end your credit card perks. All while adding $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit.
Two hundred and fifteen Republican House members voted for the spending and tax cut measure, which President Donald Trump dubbed a “big beautiful bill,” strongly advocating for its passage. All 212 Democrats voted against the measure, along with two Republicans. Two Republican House members missed the vote; one because he was asleep in the wee hours of the morning when the voting took place.
When some aspects of the bill, such as a 10-year freeze on state AI laws and a provision making it more difficult to hold federal officials in contempt for violating court orders, have been pointed out to Republican House members who voted for the bill, some now claim they didn’t know about these and other provisions. If they had, they claim, they would have voted against the bill. Job number one for an elected official, we’d point out, should be to know what you’re voting for.
Many Americans are rightly afraid of the consequences of the bill should it become law as it currently stands. It should not, of course.
Some of those fears were shared with Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who bravely held a town hall meeting in Parkersburg, Iowa. Not bravely, the meeting was held at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday. More than 100 people still showed up.
When Ernst was explaining (mostly erroneously) that the people who would no longer receive Medicaid benefits if the big beautiful bill became law were ineligible, a woman shouted: “People are going to die.”
Ernst started to repeat her claims about Medicaid, but then said: “Well, we are all going to die.”
While true, those words betrayed a stunning lack of empathy for the concerns of her constituents. The woman who shouted was most likely not concerned about people eventually dying of old age, she was more likely worried about people without health insurance dying unnecessarily.
Not content with her snide answers, Ernst inexplicably doubled down with a video “apology” over the weekend. In the video, which it appears Ernst filmed herself, the senator is walking through a cemetery. She wants to sincerely apologize, she says, for her remarks at the town hall.
“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth. So I apologize,” Ernst said in the video posted to her Instagram account.
“And, I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well,” she added. “But for those who would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I would encourage you to embrace my lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
With all due respect to Ernst and her religious beliefs, embracing Jesus is not a logical option to providing health care to those who need it. Embracing Jesus Christ will not feed children who may go hungry without food stamp benefits.
Mocking people who have genuine, and strongly felt, fears about the damage this bill will do to America by suggesting that those concerns are as made up as the tooth fairy is not only insulting, it is vulgar. It shows a stunning lack of understanding of, and concern for, average Americans..
According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $723 billion over a decade. It could strip Medicaid coverage from 7.8 million people and lead to 10.9 million more uninsured Americans over 10 years, according to the latest CBO analysis.
In Iowa, half of all nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid, as are more than a third of the state’s children. In Maine, Medicaid covers two-thirds of nursing home residents, nearly half of working-age adults with disabilities and more than a third of our children. In both states, roughly three-quarters of adult Medicaid recipients are working.
These are not, to use Ernst’s analysis, people who do not qualify for these benefits. Nor are they people who are shirking employment to gain health care coverage.
This bill is so harmful that even Elon Musk, Trump’s right-hand man in slashing the U.S. government, has called it a “disgusting abomination.”
The bill is now in the hands of the U.S. Senate. It should not simply be tweaked. It should be rejected.
