They avoided government shutdowns, but defeated the party last week, with the two defeating the party, but are trying to predict Medicaid, where California Democrats are trying to project a united front on central issues in their next big budget fight.
Republicans have already shown their intention to cut hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for tax cuts for the rich, to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health programs for the wealthy, people with disabilities and people with disabilities, Democrats must stop.
“Our budget should be a statement of our national values. What’s important to us should be reflected in that budget. But what we’re looking at now is an attack on our value when they’re making this attack on our budget.”
The event, in line with a clear message about Republican budget priorities, said it threatens the happiness of the average American, and was part of a broader national effort among Democrats before the desperate final day in Washington.
They don’t want to repeat the mistakes from last week. Democrats will split through GOP suspension and avoid federal shutdowns.
The leader’s leader has been accused of giving up a confused message about what is at stake in the crisis, surrendering to Republicans at a rare moment when he had leverage, and giving President Trump and his party a key victory while roughly running the usual bipartisan process of funding it.
This episode exposed a deep rift in the Democratic strategy. Former House Speaker Pelosi even opposed the unusually failed plea to Democrats against halting their leader, New York Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
But on Tuesday, Pelosi and Schumer appeared to be in line once more, if not last week, at least in the way forward. Pelosi’s event was part of “Medicaid Day,” which Schumer promoted several hours ago on ABC’s “The View.”
“We’re talking to all the different parts of the state and district about how bad Medicaid cuts are,” Schumer said.
“We don’t suffer, we organize. Today, today we have many events across the country that will begin in New York,” Pelosi repeated hours later. “And we have them tomorrow and the next day, and the next day.”
Many Democrats held small events and roundtable discussions with healthcare providers in their own district, including Rep. Sydney Kamlager Dove of Los Angeles and Rep. Ted Lew of Redondo Beach. Protesters also denounced Medicaid cuts outside Republican Rep. Young Kim’s Anaheim Hills office.
Democrats say their hyperfocus on Medicaid isn’t just intense – Republicans framed it that way.
Trump has repeatedly stated that his party is not chasing people’s Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits, and acted anger at the claims, stating that otherwise the White House only supports the elimination of fraud and abuse in such programs.
“Who doesn’t support the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse of government spending that ultimately costs taxpayers?” he said.
Congressional Republicans have made similar arguments, accusing Democrats of lying about Medicaid cuts and stacking bases to score political points.
Protesters have kept their signs last week outside the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said they would vote to move forward with a GOP-written fundraising patch to avoid government shutdowns, saying they would vote last week.
(Michel Nigro / Pacific Press / Lightrocket via Getty Images)
However, Republicans raised concerns last month when they passed a budget resolution aimed at extending the 2017 tax cuts.
The resolution does not explicitly require Medicaid cuts, but directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to cut spending by $880 billion over the next decade.
Democrats say that simple mathematics is about reducing Medicare unless the committee wants to cut Medicare. The committee was able to completely cut everything else in the budget and could not reach the savings Republicans wanted, an independent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office concluded.
At Pelosi’s event, House Ranking Democrat Mike Thompson (D-st. Helena) said it was the method and tool for the subcommittee on tax policy.
“We’re here because this president and the Republicans in Congress want to destroy Medicaid. They say no, they won’t touch Medicaid.
California’s Medicaid version of Medi-Cal covers around 15 million Californians, or more than a third of the state’s population, according to recent estimates from state health officials. Many of those patients are children.
But as Thompson and other events pointed out, many others in the state are affected by Medicaid reductions, especially as they knit health systems and hospitals, in rural and other poor communities where Medicaid patients make up more patients.
“We need to make sure our colleagues in the state’s red district understand this and make sure they speak up,” Thompson said.
Sen. Adam Schiff agreed, calling such cuts “absolutely devastating for healthcare across the country, especially states like California, where many residents use Medicaid.”
Schiff said the statewide healthcare system, particularly in rural areas, is already in a financially “unstable position” and cutting Medicaid funds will bring a “cascade set of hospital and clinic closures” into motion.
Dr. Josh Adler, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at UCSF Health, said more than 70% of the system’s inpatient care is roughly divided between Medicare and Medicaid patients. Last year, he said 58% of patients in the emergency department and 35% of the system’s hospitalized population rely on Medicaid.
The expected cuts in Congress will “severely weaken the health care system where millions of Californians rely on high-quality primary and secondary care, increasing the compensation costs for hospitals that are already financially stressed,” he said.
Dr Amy Herold, OB-Gyn and Chief Admin Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Providen Queen Queen at NAPA’s Valley Medical Center, said her area is known for its tourism, but is actually a rural farming and service community.
Herold said 75% of hospital patients take Medicare or Medicaid, more than 30% of Medicaid, and “more than 50% of pregnant women look at pregnant women who have given birth two days ago.”
The proposed cuts would make it difficult for her hospital to remain open, she said.
“Because there’s a healthcare desert, not only does people using Medi-Cal/Medicaid have no access to care, but no one has access to care regardless of their insurance status,” she said. “This is what keeps me up at night.”
Sasca Bitner, who works for the San Francisco Disability and Aging Services Committee and has quadriplegia and speech impairment and vision impairment from cerebral palsy, believes Medicaid saved her life by providing her with an arrangement of home and community-based support and health care services. In 2013, she said she spent five months in the hospital with lymphoma.
“There are other vulnerable people like me who have disabilities, the elderly, who are dependent on Medicaid,” Bittner said.
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