MAGA senator’s 'remarkable' Medicaid defense reflects intense conflict within GOP: analysis

As President Donald Trump continues to push for a "big, beautiful bill" that will combine his legislative priorities, Republicans in Congress are fighting over the particulars — including Medicaid funding. Some Tea Party budget hawks in the House Freedom Caucus favor steep Medicaid cuts, while a group of House Republicans in swing districts are saying that Medicaid cuts are off the table for them.

Meanwhile, on the U.S. Senate side, ultra-MAGA GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is expressing vehement opposition to Medicaid cuts — a position that gives him some unlikely common ground with Senate Democrats.

Jonathan Cohn of the conservative website The Bulwark discussed Hawley's defense of Medicaid during an appearance on the May 15 episode of The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast," hosted by former Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent. And Cohn believes it reflects infighting within the GOP.

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Recently interviewed on CNN, Hawley warned that Medicaid cuts will really hurt working class voters in his state.

Cohn told Sargent, "I was listening to that CNN interview, and my first thought was, 'If you didn't tell me who was speaking and you told me that was coming from a liberal Democrat or somebody like Henry Waxman — the great senior and now retired member of the House who was like a father of the modern Medicaid program — I would believe it because it sounded like something they would say.' And then, I immediately thought ahead to the next election. And I'm thinking, 'If I'm a House Republican running for reelection and I voted for some of this, I'm going to be running in an ad.'"

Cohn continued, "Someone’s going be quoting Josh Hawley in that ad. They're just going to run his sound and say — especially if it's a place like Missouri where they know Josh Hawley — 'Representative X voted for Medicaid cuts. Josh Hawley, MAGA Republican, said: These will harm working-class voters.' You could literally quote him. So it was really remarkable."

Cohn noted, however, that when Hawley was Missouri attorney general, he "signed on to one of" the GOP "lawsuits challenging part of the Affordable Care Act," a.k.a. Obamacare.

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"Why does Josh Hawley care about this so much?," Cohn told Sargent. "Because Missouri now has expanded Medicaid. They did it by ballot initiative. And by the way, they did it with a constitutional amendment — that is not something they can change easily. So they are on the hook for paying for Medicaid…. There’s a sensitivity to the fact that their own voters are now depending on Medicaid."

Cohn continued, "The party is different than it was years ago. That is why Josh Hawley is like this. That is why Trump is talking like he doesn't want to cut Medicaid. So there is a real reluctance to go there. On the other hand, this is still the Republican Party. They want their big tax cuts."

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Listen to Greg Sargent's full interview with Jonathan Cohn for The New Republic at this link or read the transcript here.