Pearl River      The Democrats have been getting a bad rap since the election about their inability to stop the 100-plus day assault on the US government and the majority of the American people.  This is paradoxical since in politics the minority never has as much power as the majority, when it comes to political parties. Yet we now have a majority Republican Party seemingly totally committed to delivering benefits to a very, very small minority of Americans, the rich that is, while hurting the livelihoods and future well-being of millions in the majority of the population, including voters who made them the majority party currently.

Despite the hand wringing and haranguing of one pundit after another about the disorganization and the confusion of the Democratic response to Trump’s flooding the zone, maybe the reality is more complicated than the headlines and opinion pages.  There have been solitary standouts that have stirred reaction:  Senator Booker’s marathon speech, Senator Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador, and Senator Sanders and Representative Ocasio’s opposition rallies around the country.  Certainly, many judges – right, left, and middle – have also tried to stand up tall for the law against the administration’s push for supreme executive unilateral power.

Now that the pages have been forced to turn from the stream of executive orders and the passivity of Congress to legislation and budget bills that have to go through Congressional committee hearings and actual votes, with or without filibusters maybe the battlelines are clearer and the battleground is easier to see.  A good example may be in some of the committee meetings where the budget and some of its cuts, especially to Medicaid, are being debated.

A story of the inside battle in the House Energy and Commerce Committee may offer hope for now and the future.  In a grueling 26 straight hours Democrats offered 33 amendments to the Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” targeting especially the attempts to eviscerate Medicaid in order to finance the continuation of Trump’s 2017 tax breaks for the rich.  Being in the minority on the committee, of course they lost every one of the amendment votes, but the fight is as important as the outcome and losing a battle in a committee may help determine the outcome of the war.

As interestingly to me were the tactics employed by the minority which showed planning and ingenuity.  Witnesses decrying the Medicaid cuts and introduced by some of the Democrats to tell their story and the impact of the cuts came not from their districts, but from the districts of many of the Republicans sitting on the committee.  These Congressmen were being forced to hear the pain that would be felt by their own constituents.  I can’t guarantee that this was front page news in the cities and towns where both the politicians and their people live, but I’m not sure how this would escape notice.

The Medicaid fight is a hard one.  As we’ve discussed, the gaslighting argument equates the programs with welfare and the reductions not as major surgery, but death by a thousand cuts.  Restricting eligibility and making access into the programs burdensome and technical by drowning applicants in paperwork and technical, on-line systems has made real cash-transfer welfare virtually impossible to access in many states and has achieved plummeting numbers of beneficiaries out of totally eligible people.  This is at the heart of pushing 13 million people off Medicaid over the next decade.  States like Georgia have already established that the work requirements are more expensive to administer than the benefits themselves.  Countless studies have established that the vast majority of recipients are already working as well.

The cuts are cynical, but there is resistance inside the houses of power, which is good and deserves support.