In these uncertain times, you can always count on congressional Republicans to be consistently devious. Last night’s–or more accurately, this morning’s–votes in the House were a case in point. First, the House GOP leaders rammed through a rules change, known as “martial law,” which basically suspended all the normal rules, including the requirement that Members have 24 hours to read major legislation before voting on it. That paved the way for snap votes on secretly assembled defense appropriations and budget reconciliation bills, in the dawn’s early light. The “defense” bill included Alaska wilderness oil drilling, cleverly linked to a big batch of money for Katrina recovery, not to mention funds for the military itself. And the budget bill, hammered out in closed House-Senate conference committee discussions with zero Democratic input, incorporated most of the House’s obnoxious safety-net cuts, including higher copayments for Medicaid beneficiaries, higher interest rates for people obtaining student loans, and most obnoxious of all, a self-defeating major cut in funds used to collect delinquent child support payments. All this was in a 700-plus-page bill that nobody got to read before it was enacted on a 212-206 vote (every single Democrat voted “no,” joined by a mere 9 Republicans). Adding to the deviousness of this grim night’s work, congressional Republicans had earlier decided to strip out new tax cuts from the budget package, not because they don’t intend to push forward with them in January, but because they want to distract attention from the fact that their brave spending cuts simply pay for a fraction of the revenues they will sacrifice in their mindless and regressive tax cut campaign. The GOPers are also cynically calculating that they can get new dividend and capital gains cuts without the filibuster protection of a reconciliation bill, by linking them to the alternative minimum tax relief that Democrats and Republicans want. (It’s also important to recognize that January 1 will bring two new tax cuts almost exclusively targeted to higher earners, that were enacted back in 2001 but deferred as part of the originally devious Republican strategy of hiding the costs of their fiscal malfeasance). It’s a pretty amazing shell-game, when you think about it, and the ability of Democrats to expose it will be a critical test of whether we can truly hold this dreadful gang accountable next November.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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May 16: Has Newsom Signaled End of California’s Latest Progressive Era?
Hard to believe I’ve now lived in California long enough that I can be nostalgic for the recent past. But something just happened that made me wonder if Golden State Democrats are at a turning point, as I suggested at New York:
Governor Gavin Newsom and many other California Democrats hoped that their state could serve as a defiant alternative to the reactionary bent of the second Trump administration, one that proudly stands up for their party’s values. But fiscal realities (including many under the influence of their enemies in Washington) still matter, and a new announcement from Newsom, as reported by the Associated Press, illustrates the limits of state-based progressivism in the Trump era:
“Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California to stop enrolling more low-income immigrants without legal status in a state-funded health care program starting in 2026 and begin charging those already enrolled a monthly premium the following year.
“The decision is driven by a higher-than-expected price tag on the program and economic uncertainty from federal tariff policies, Newsom said in a Wednesday announcement. The Democratic governor’s move highlights Newsom’s struggle to protect his liberal policy priorities amid budget challenges in his final years on the job.
“California was among the first states to extend free health care benefits to all poor adults regardless of their immigration status last year, an ambitious plan touted by Newsom to help the nation’s most populous state to inch closer to a goal of universal health care. But the cost for such expansion ran $2.7 billion more than the administration had anticipated.”
The steady expansion of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, which is being at best “paused” right now, reflected two different but mutually reinforcing progressive values: a slow but stead crawl toward universal health-care coverage in the absence of a national single-payer system, and a concern for the needs of the undocumented immigrants who play so prominent a role in California’s economy and society. In particular, California Democrats have embraced the argument that health care should be a right, not some sort of earned privilege, in part because health insurance helps keep overall health-care costs down in the long run by promoting early detection and treatment of illnesses while avoiding expensive emergency-room care. Because federal Medicaid dollars cannot be used to provide services for undocumented immigrants, California (like six other states that cover significant numbers of adults, and 13 others who cover children) has used state dollars to pay for them.
California Democrats were in a position to expand Medi-Cal thanks to the legislative supermajorities they have enjoyed since 2018, which is also when Newsom became governor. But the latest expansion has proved to be fiscally unsustainable as statewide budget shortfalls loom. Newsom has been quick to attribute the latest budget woes to revenues losses caused by Trump’s tariff policies. But the broader problem is that, unlike the federal government, California must balance its budget, even though many of the factors influencing spending and revenues are beyond its control. And the problem is likely to get worse as the Trump administration and its congressional allies shift costs to the states, a major part of their strategy for reducing federal spending (to pay for high-end federal tax cuts).
There’s a specific emerging federal policy that probably influenced Newsom’s latest step: Congressional Republicans are very likely to adopt a punitive reduction in Medicaid matching funds for states that are using their own money to cover undocumented immigrants. The details are still under development, but the provision could hit California pretty hard.
Numbers aside, this episode represents a potential turning point in California’s progressive political trends, reflecting Trump’s better-than-expected showing in the Golden State in 2024 along with the passage of a ballot initiative increasing criminal penalties for drug and theft offenses and the rejection of an increase in the state’s minimum wage. There’s even some optimistic talk among California Republicans about breaking their long losing streak (dating back to 2006) in statewide elections next year. That’s pretty unlikely given the high odds of an anti-Trump midterm backlash, but the fact that the heirs of Ronald Reagan are even dreaming dreams is a bit of a surprise.
It’s also possible that the ever-ambitious Newsom doesn’t mind calibrating his own ideological image toward the perceived center in his final days as governor (he’s term-limited next year). He and other California Democrats can only hope that economic trends and what happens in Washington give them a choice in the matter.