EXCLUSIVE – As House GOP leaders advance President Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” toward a floor vote this week, Democrats, who are in the minority, are sounding a warning.
“We’re going to hold Republicans accountable and there will be a price to pay,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington State, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, emphasized as she pointed to next year’s midterm elections during a Fox News Digital interview.
Republicans are holding onto an extremely razor-thin majority in the chamber right now, and Democrats only need a three-seat pickup to win back the House majority in the 2026 elections.
Additionally, they view the sweeping and controversial GOP-crafted measure stocked full of Trump’s second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit – which is currently making its way through numerous votes and hurdles in the House – as political ammunition.
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President Donald Trump, left, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talk with reporters after a House Republican Conference meeting on the budget reconciliation bill in the Capitol building on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“This is a terrible piece of legislation,” DelBene argued.
Democrats from across the party are shining a spotlight on the Republicans’ restructuring of Medicaid, the nearly 60-year-old federal government program that provides health insurance for roughly 71 million adults and children with limited incomes.
“Let’s be clear, all Republicans are talking about right now is how many people and how fast they’re going to take away healthcare. They have these huge cuts to Medicaid, 14 million people lose healthcare across the country, and they’re talking about how fast they can do that,” DelBene charged on Tuesday.
She claimed that House Republicans are “all blindly following the president and going to blindly follow him off the cliff.”
Rep. Ted Lieu of California, another member of the House Democrat leadership, argued as he took questions from reporters that the bill “has the largest cut to healthcare in U.S. history.”
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The cuts to Medicaid, being drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cut law, which is set to expire later this year, include a slew of new rules and regulatory requirements for those seeking coverage. Among them are a new set of work requirements for many of those seeking coverage.
“When you go across the country and talk to folks, folks are outraged, and they’re scared. They’re scared about the cuts to healthcare, not only cutting 14 million people off of healthcare but then raising costs beyond that for everyone and things like rural hospitals closing,” DelBene argued. “This would have devastating impacts across the country. This is policy that Republicans are fighting for, cutting nutrition health programs so that families don’t even have healthy food.”
House Republicans push back against the Democrats’ attacks and say what they are doing is putting an end to waste, fraud and abuse currently in the Medicaid system, so the program can work for the public in the way that it was intended.
They call any talk that they are cutting aid to mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly a “flat out lie.”
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DelBene countered, saying, “we’re not buying the argument because what we’ve seen in committee, what they’ve written down on paper is massive cuts in healthcare and all to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest in our country. This isn’t a bill about helping working families. This bill is devastating for working families.”
However, her counterparty, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Fox News Digital in a statement that “Republicans are ending waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid so the most vulnerable get the care they need.”
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is interviewed by Fox News Digital on April 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Additionally, Hudson argued that “Democrats are lying to protect a broken status quo that lets illegal immigrants siphon off billions meant for American families. We’re strengthening Medicaid for future generations by protecting taxpayers and restoring integrity.”
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Dating back to last year’s presidential campaign, Trump has vowed not to touch Medicaid. On Tuesday, as he made a rare stop on Capitol Hill to meet behind closed doors with House Republicans in order to shore up support for the bill, Trump’s message to fiscally conservative lawmakers looking to make further cuts to Medicaid was “don’t f— around with Medicaid.”
While there are divisions between Republicans over Medicaid, and a chasm between the two major parties over the longstanding entitlement program, there is one point of agreement – this issue will continue to simmer on the campaign trail in one form or another long after the legislative battles on Capitol Hill are over.
