New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a swing-district Republican, struggled to defend his party’s vicious Medicaid cuts during a media appearance on Friday.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough noted that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” would result in Medicaid cuts between $900 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade, then raised concerns from Lawler’s own district.
Host Joe Scarborough: If you look at the hospitals in your own district, Montefiore Nyack Hospital is already saying because of that vote, because of these cuts, they’re going to have to cut back services. They’re going to have to cut staff. They’re going to have to cut care. Same thing with Westchester Hospital. Hospitals across your district are going to have to cut services and care and staff members and budgets because of your vote and because of this bill that passed. That’s what they’re saying. It’s not some left-wing focus groups—
Rep. Mike Lawler: Respectfully, I’ve met with—
Scarborough: Well, I’m just telling you what they’ve said. And so—
Lawler: No, what they’re parroting is the same talking points being put out by the state and by the hospital association—
Scarborough: So, they’re parroting—wait! You know their business better than [cross talk]. You know their business better than they know their business? Congressman, you can keep talking if you want to, but are you saying … that you know their business, you know doctors’ business, you know hospital administrators’ business better than they know their own business? Is that what you’re telling us here?
“When it comes to Medicaid, I have been very clear: I am not cutting benefits for any eligible recipient,” Lawler told a group of prescreened constituents at a town hall in April, despite already having voted for an earlier draft of the budget blueprint to cut Medicaid.
Alongside his Republican colleagues, Lawler voted for a tax giveaway to the rich that adds trillions to the deficit while gutting Medicaid partly by imposing bureaucratic work requirements on recipients, most of whom are employed.
Lawler, who infamously wore blackface in 2006, is facing a tough challenge this fall—and he’s earned it.