Elections 2026: Will Republicans Counter Democrat Disinformation Campaign Against Big Beautiful Bill?
To hold the House, Republicans will have to expose the Democrats’ disinformation campaign and set the record straight.
Although Democrats were unable to stop President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill from becoming law, their relentless attacks on its provisions — particularly their fearmongering over cuts to Medicaid — have left a lasting negative impression on many voters.
By framing the bill as a ruthless assault on vulnerable Americans, the Democrats, the legacy media, and even a few Republicans — North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon come to mind — succeeded in planting doubt and stirring public anxiety about this legislation.
Here are some recent headlines from the legacy media that are stoking fear about the law:
The New York Times: Republican Bill Puts Nation on New, More Perilous Fiscal Path
The Washington Post: Senate GOP tax bill includes largest cut to U.S. safety net in decades
Salon: “Existential risk”: Trump’s bill could raise energy costs, lose 900K US jobs
In a recent op-ed, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, “No one is ‘gutting’ the safety net: The GOP will have to rebut the Democratic and media distortions about their reforms or lose the 2026 election.”
They are right. Republicans have 16 months to replace this false perception with the truth. They must make it their highest priority. Failure to do so will all but guarantee the loss of their majority in the House, and could even put their control of the Senate at risk.
We’ve seen it all before. Democrats are experts at creating false narratives and presenting them as the truth. Remember when Trump was an agent of Russia? The Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign? And despite the fact that Trump is on record offering National Guard troops to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ahead of Jan. 6, 2021 — and was rebuffed — by the end of the day, the Left’s spurious version of events, that Trump had incited a riot to prevent the election from being certified, was firmly in place.
Republicans must demonstrate to the public how profoundly Medicaid has been exploited — not only by ineligible recipients but also by the states themselves — and explain how the reforms in the new law are designed to curb these abuses.
First, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for 2023 (the most recent full year of data available) was 11.1%. Yet, The New York Times reports that roughly 20% of Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid. The Wall Street Journal estimates the figure to be closer to 25%. To put it mildly, these numbers suggest that Medicaid may be serving a broader population than originally intended, raising questions about misuse or overextension of the program.
So, why are so many people living above the federal poverty level receiving Medicaid benefits? Well, you can thank the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid enrollment ballooned during the Obama administration. Originally intended as a safety net for Americans whose incomes fell at or below the federal poverty limit, the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid in 2014 allowed those with incomes up to 1.38 times that threshold to qualify. Thus, many “able-bodied, prime-aged” adults entered the program and continue to receive benefits today. This group is referred to as the “expansion population.”
According to health policy research site KFF, since its inception in 2014, 41 states (and the District of Columbia) have adopted and implemented this program.
The new legislation has introduced a 20-hour per week work requirement for those whose incomes exceed the poverty level. But, contrary to the Left’s talking points, the work requirement does not apply to the disabled, pregnant women, or those caring for a child younger than age 14.
It does apply to the “able-bodied, prime-aged” people who would prefer to receive a monthly check from the government rather than go to work.
And, as mentioned above, some states have manipulated the program for their own gain.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The other main provision is tamping down state scams to hoover up more federal dollars. The main losers here are large hospital systems that have been doing well on the largesse.
The GOP bill also includes sensible measures such as asking states to check their Medicaid expansion rolls every six months and more scrutiny on ObamaCare subsidies. That is necessary because the Biden Administration waved millions onto health entitlements. The Paragon Institute estimates that 6.4 million people are enrolled in fully subsidized ObamaCare plans but don’t meet the eligibility criteria. Apparently this is what Democrats support.
…
The law also tries to tighten up waivers that states have abused to eliminate the work rules. The other major change is asking states with high improper payment rates to have skin in the game and pick up a share of benefit costs, which are currently billed 100% to the federal taxpayer.
In a separate op-ed, the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel provided a point-by-point rebuttal of the Democrats’ allegations against the new law. Regarding their claim that it’s an attack on the social safety net, she wrote:
Repeat and repeat again: Republicans are not cutting spending on Medicaid or food stamps; the House and Senate bills merely slow those programs’ (unsustainable) rate of growth. Republicans accomplish this by implementing modest work requirements for able-bodied adults, by pushing back on a scheme states use to inflate federal Medicaid spending, and by asking states to be more diligent in identifying fraud. Our recent breakdown of the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] forecast of who would “lose” Medicaid by 2034 shows a population of able-bodied adults who aren’t complying with the work requirement, illegal migrants, and people who qualify for other subsidized coverage.
According to the CBO forecast, most of those whom Democrats warn will lose their Medicaid benefits “don’t work even part-time or are illegal migrants.” [Emphasis added.]
The CBO also claims that 1.4 million recipients “do not meet citizenship and immigration status requirements for Medicaid enrollment.”
The American Enterprise Institute recently reported: “For Medicaid recipients who do not report working, the most common activity after sleeping is watching television and playing video games. They spend 4.2 hours per day watching television and playing video games, or 125 hours during a 30-day month.”
I don’t think Republicans will find it particularly difficult to explain the provisions in the bill. The changes are focused on eliminating fraud and waste. Recall that the only people truly outraged when the Department of Government Efficiency revealed the grand larceny taking place within the U.S. Agency for International Development in February were those who had been profiting from the grift.
If Republicans want to prevent the final two years of Trump’s presidency from being derailed by needless investigations and partisan obstruction, it is imperative that they publicly expose the Democrats’ disinformation campaign and set the record straight.
Republicans must tattoo this message on voters’ minds.
American woman celebrates going to Walmart and spending $3,000 on EBT Food Stamps
I don’t know about you, but to me this woman looks very able bodied and able to work…. pic.twitter.com/D7WrofR0Ly
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) July 5, 2025
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
They had better counter every bit of it as the media and Dems run the same playbook every time.
They operate as a team.
Mid terms are over a year away. The BBB will play not part in that election, other than highlight the improved spending power of the working classes.
Republicans would be better served getting off their arses and working like their very political lives depend on expanding their majority! Because it quite literally does.
Blacks just openly celebrating that we the tax payers finance their wanton pre-societal behaviors and excuse their outsized criminality. Disgusting. I’d rather set my tax dollars on fire at this point.
I think it will play a huge role in the midterms.
Haven’t they delayed the medicaid cuts to only start after the midterm election? But people will know it’s coming. And ineligible recipients vote too.
Frankly I’m not optimistic about the midterms. That’s why this had to get done now. There may not be another chance. The election will loom much larger in a year, and after that gridlock is likely.
Mamdani won the NY Dem primary fair and square, both the proportional and absolute counts. I think Trump is trying to deport enough fake voters and other problems that we might win the midterms. I wish him success.
The House is very close, but the Senate is also a bit of a worry. Out of 33 (or 34) seats up in 2026, something like 22 are Republican, so say the R’s have 10 more seats at risk than the Dems. If an incumbent has an 80% chance of winning, that means they can expect to lose 2 seats because of that 10 seat greater exposure.
This. Good and hard. However, given the track record of past R led Congress’s, I doubt there will be much push back, and lots of rolling.
There’s already organic counter programming online to refute the lefty narrative. Many content creators are pushing the facts about Medicaid enrollment requiring 20 hours of work by Able Bodied adults and other common sense ‘welfare’ enrollment standards. Often this is delivered with brutal honesty by folks of all walks of life. The overwhelming majority of US Citizens seem to be well past caring about politeness on these issues. Most are quite aware of being taken advantage of and are tired of the d/prog wokiestas using the basic good nature/empathy of taxpaying US Citizens as weapon to scam them on an industrial scale.
Couple this ongoing organic pushback with media hits by surrogates, town halls in districts plus the natural consequences of folks going to get a dang job, improving their circumstances or becoming ineligible through their own deliberate inaction, then add Trump WH salesmanship and IMO this is a tempest in a teapot.
once again the left is given the victory with those 3 options for the able bodied…
they can continue to defraud the taxpayes with the options given them
the bill should have been easy with this
get a job,,,not “schooling” or community work etc
thats another win for lefty
I agree. Frankly I’d put a minimum 80 hour of work per month along with school/training/volunteer activity with a total requirement of 160 hors per month/40 hours a week of ‘productive’ effort.
I would slightly disagree on a ‘win’ for leftists, at least longer term. IMO more stringent work requirements are coming. Especially when the new funding for ICE kicks in and the deportation effort ramps up even higher. I’d predict that we move to a ‘work center’ model. If someone applies for benefits either unemployment or ‘welfare’/Medicaid then they gotta do so through the work center. The work center will assist to create resume, provide soft skill training and provide job leads. After say 90 days of job search by the individual then if still unemployed the work center gives an ultimatum; accept the job they assign based on current skill set or lose benefits. Getting fired (not laid off) would also terminate benefits. Put a lifetime cap of 36 months on eligibility. If we ship out illegal Aliens who are employed under the table or with stolen/fake ID then those jobs will need to be filled. Able bodied adults on ‘welfare’ can be shifted into those vacant jobs getting them out of the public purse.
That’s the sort of ‘hand up, not a hand out’ traditional public assistance that most taxpaying US Citizens would support. It meets the temporary need, allows individuals an opportunity to choose a job of their choice while putting a hard limit on public empathy so that taxpayers ain’t taken advantage of.
Unemployment is paid for by the employer (actually by the employee via a reduction in their pay, but I digress). So, in cases of unemployment, I disagree with your idea.
Welfare and Medicaid though, I completely agree.
Unemployment is paid for by a fund into which employers contribute, at the state level. It seems that all states handle it similarly. There have been times when the fund ran out and it was either topped up or wasn’t, as I recall.
Would need a solid Republican majority in Congress to overcome backsliders, and probably 60 seats in the Senate because much of that would probably get kicked out of a Reconciliation bill, to do this. It could happen but I can’t see it in the immediate future.
would like to slightly re write this for you:
Although Democrats were unable to stop President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill from becoming law, their relentless attacks on its provisions —
to
Although the GOP was unable to stop ….
I disagree with your edits. Republicans strongly supported it in both chambers. There was very little margin to play with in the House, and of course absolutely united Dem opposition. If only Republicans could show unity like Dems.
And in the Senate, the Parliamentarian kicked out a lot of good stuff. This parliamentarian was appointed by Harry Reid, the former black-eyed Democratic senator from Nevada.
The GOP argument will be front and center for most taxpayers next Apr 15.
Big break on taxes for hourly workers getting OT. Trump is already strong with blue collars workers, and this will help even more.
The tax breaks on tips should help with young single women which is a key part of the Democrat base.
The tax breaks on SS payments with help with old voters who lean Democrat and have been told for years that the GOP will take away their SS benefits once they control power.
I like the GOP arguments for working people and retirees keeping more of their own money vs. Democrat appeals to give that money to able bodied free loaders so they can continue to scam working people into supporting their lifestyle choices.
those who lean left will continue to vote left
they will GLADLY take the breaks that trump gave them and still follow their marxist overlords
That’s true, but it’s the independents who matter.
Unfortunately, the tax bill may indeed be front and center; and Republican’s grandstanding may come back to bite them. All of the rhetoric is comparing the OBBB with the situation where all the prior Trump tax cuts were due to go away in 2026. In fact, people will be comparing their new tax bills with what they were paying under the current tax law, which includes the original Trump tax cuts.
Don’t quite get it. If their income and tax situation is the same – they will pay the same. Without the Bill – there would have been a substantial increase. Now are Americans too dumb to figure this out. Don’t ever underestimate the cluelessness of the ‘typical voter.’ But let’s hope not.
dems:
this bill did not help the poor at all!!
yeah
cause the poor dont pay income taxes ( up to a point) in the first place
The Republicans had better counter this aggressively, each and every day. Because the Democrats and their lying Media Hacks will be lying, and lying, and lying about it EACH and every day. It’s what they do. It’s what the Democrats have been doing all my life, and I am an old guy. “The evil Republicans want to take away your Social Security, your Health Insurance, and throw Granny in the snow, and kill Grandpa – and millions of children are going to die.”
I first heard those lies when I was 6 years old, in about 1960. My parent were big time FDR Democrats, and I was taught that every world was true. But of course they were not – just BIG WHOPPING LIES that Herr Goebbels would have been proud of. And every Republican Presidential Candidate since Wendell Willkie who ran in 1940 has been called a Nazi.
Will all the stale old lies work this time – maybe, but maybe not. All I can say to the Republicans is this – don’t let them get away with their vicious lies – fight back, fight back as hard as you have to, But for once – win!
Leave a Comment