Arkansas's congressmen all vote to slash their constituents' health insurance

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans scored a massive win on Thursday with final passage of the president's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" before a self-imposed July 4 deadline. All four of Arkansas's congressmen — Reps. Rick Crawford, French Hill, Steve Womack and Bruce Westerman — voted "yes," like nearly every other Republican in the House. Every Democrat voted no.

What did Arkansas's four Republicans vote for, exactly? First and foremost, tax cuts that skew heavily toward the wealthy. Hundreds of billions of dollars more for immigration enforcement and military spending, and hundreds of billions less for renewable energy and student loan relief. Three trillion dollars added to the national debt. And gigantic cuts to Medicaid, which provides insurance to more than one in four Arkansans.

As The New York Times explains here, the Republican bill is set up so that the sweet parts (tax cuts) kick in right away, while the painful parts (Medicaid cuts) mostly won't take effect until after the 2026 midterm elections. The goal is to confuse voters and deflect blame when people lose coverage in the years ahead. Republicans' chief talking point on Medicaid has been to point to provisions in the bill that would limit immigrants' ability to claim benefits — here's Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton mouthing the party line — but those are only a tiny portion of the overall cuts coming down the pike. The real "savings" will come from kicking millions of citizens off Medicaid, many of whom now vote Republican.

It was always unclear how Trump's new quasi-populist coalition would balance the economic interests of the elite at the core of the traditional Republican Party with its new working class members. Now we know: The wealthy get the tax bonanza they've always wanted, the middle class gets crumbs, and the poor get their health insurance and SNAP benefits shredded to pay for it all.

(And even then, just partly: The Medicaid cuts, cruel though they are, don't come anywhere close to covering the cost of the Trump tax cuts. The bill is mostly funded not by cutting spending but by borrowing unthinkable sums of money, which is why the libertarian CATO Institute called it a "fiscal disaster." Nonetheless, Republicans like Arkansas's Rep. Hill — a banker and the chair of the House Financial Services Committee — are claiming a $3 trillion increase to the national debt is an act of "fiscal responsibility.")

The GOP's expectation is that, as outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell predicted recently, downscale conservative-leaning voters will simply "get over" the shock of losing health care and keep voting red no matter what. We will see. So far, Trumpian governance hasn't been wildly popular, and the Big Beautiful Bill itself is opposed by a large majority of voters, polls show. As Medicaid has grown to cover more and more people, it's also become more and more popular.

When these Medicaid cuts kick in, Republicans are banking on voters being too stupid to remember where the cuts came from. It's quite a gamble.

Keesa Smith-Brantley, the director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, lamented the House vote in a statement Thursday:

"We are disappointed in the House of Representatives' passage of the Senate's budget reconciliation bill, particularly so with Arkansas's Congressional delegation. Our Senators and Representatives, in voting for this bill have condemned hundreds of thousands of Arkansans to increased hunger and poverty and poorer health.

At Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, we are thankful for our fellow advocates across the state who have called and emailed the members of their congressional delegation and who have shared our information and action alerts with their networks. It is through the strength of our collective voices that we retain never-ending hope for the future.

I am grateful to our staff at Arkansas Advocates, who have dedicated much of their time to analyzing provisions in each draft of the bill, assessing how the bill will affect our state, and providing this analysis and information in various forms to a multitude of audiences. Although the outcome was not what we wanted, I am confident our efforts will yield benefits in other ways. We have made a greater number of Arkansans more aware of how high the stakes can be when lawmakers take funding away from critical programs. We have activated community members around the state who might have otherwise stayed out of the conversation entirely. And we have honed a range of skills that will serve us well in the future. Of course, we will keep Arkansans updated on the implementation and impact of this bill.

Our continued passion must drive our purpose as we look ahead to what comes next."