Josh Hawley and the Mirage of Republican 'Populism'

[Brenda]

MAY 20, 2025

Last Thursday, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri rebuked “corporatist Republicans” in a New York Times op-ed published shortly after his colleagues in the House released a draft of their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill. The senator specifically called out those in his own party who are pushing for big cuts to Medicaid in order to extend the tax cuts that Donald Trump signed into law in 2017. Cutting the insurance program that currently serves over 70 million Americans in order to fund “corporate giveaways” and tax cuts for the rich, wrote the senior senator from Missouri, is both “morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

If passed in its current form, the budget bill would slash around $715 billion in funding for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and enact burdensome work requirements for recipients. This would lead to a massive reduction in the rolls over the next decade, with millions of Americans becoming uninsured as a result. In addition to these cuts, House Republicans have also proposed $300 billion in reductions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps put food on the table for 41 million Americans. Together, these cuts would devastate poor and working-class communities — all for the purpose of closing a budget shortfall that could easily be avoided by sunsetting the 2017 tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the top one and 0.1%.

The House Republicans’ one big tax hike, meanwhile, speaks volumes about party priorities. Under the House plan, universities with endowments that exceed $500,000 per student would be on the hook for a major tax increase on endowment income, with the rate going up to as high as 21% for the wealthiest universities. This was an easy call for Republicans who refuse to raise taxes on billionaires or corporations yet want to appear as if they’re challenging “elites.” Here, Republicans can keep taxes low for the 1%t while targeting elite universities that promulgate “woke” ideology. In the end, the measure would end up hurting low-income students who rely on financial aid and scholarship the most, while further cutting into research funding. This fits nicely with the Trump administration’s campaign against universities and research institutions, though it hardly attests to the GOP’s putative transformation into a “party of the working class.”

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/josh-hawley-and-the-mirage-of-republican-populism/