Democratic Senators Crash House To Protest Medicaid Cuts

Democratic Senators Cory Booker (NJ), Tina Smith (MN), and Brian Schatz (HI) showed up to protest Medicaid cuts with a hand delivered letter during the committee markup.

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Some Democratic Senators aren’t sitting by and waiting on their hands as three House committees mark up legislation that would take away health care from nearly 14 million people.

Sens. Booker, Smith, Schatz made the walk across the Capitol to hand deliver letters from their constituents protesting the Medicaid cuts.

The Senators said, ““We are going over to deliver some letters from our constituents about how damaging this Medicaid cuts are that the House is taking up right now, 14 million people losing their health insurance. And we want to draw attention to what it is they're trying to do.”

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This is exactly the sort of thing that Democrats need to be doing. Democrats can’t let Republicans off the hook while they are doing this markup.

The pressure on Republicans needs to come from all sides and all directions.

Moderate House Republicans are worried about the Medicaid cuts, but they are expected to cave as soon as Trump starts to put pressure on them.

The real chance for stopping these cuts is in the Senate where a group of 5 Republicans have stated their opposition to any Medicaid cuts.

What the Democratic senators did was draw attention to what the Republicans are doing, and attention is the last thing that the House Republicans want.

Democrats and the American people will need to be relentless for the next two weeks, because history is repeating itself as Republicans are hellbent on taking away healthcare from millions of Americans. This time they want to make millions sicker to give permanent tax cuts to the rich.

What do you think about the senators showing up in the House? Share your thoughts in the comments below.