'Taxing poor to give to the rich': Leading MAGA Republican hammers own party
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) came down hard on his party for meddling with Medicaid and possibly requiring co-pays for Medicaid recipients seeking medical care.
"It's reverse class warfare, is what it is," Hawley told CNN's Manu Raju Wednesday. "It's taxing the poor to give to the rich, and I'm totally opposed to that."
Hawley took issue with changes to Medicaid — long considered an untouchable entitlement that Hawley called his "line in the sand" — in the draft House version of President Trump's "big, beautiful" spending bill.
The senator recently published an op-ed in The New York Times, in which he claimed that trying to slash the benefit was "both morally wrong and politically suicidal."
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He told Raju, "I don't like the idea of decreasing funding for rural hospitals — I'm worried that the house bill goes way too far in that regard," Hawley said. "I also don't like what is basically a hidden tax on working poor people who are trying to get health care. I mean, this whole idea of we're going to charge them now additional co-pays in order to access health care — have to say that this sounds like a tax to me. So, now we're taxing poor people when they're trying to get access to health care. I've got big concerns about that."
Hawley said he can't support the bill if it makes it to the Senate by gutting Medicaid, and he claimed that President Trump would never sign such a bill..
"Republicans now, thanks to Donald Trump, are the party of the working class...The big majority of working class voters voted for the GOP. That means now the GOP needs to deliver for them, and we do that by giving them tax relief, we do that by bringing down their health care bills — we don't do that by cutting Medicaid."