Tiebreaker Vance Bashed From Both Sides on Big Beautiful Bill

Yahoo

02-07-2025

J.D. Vance has come out swinging for President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill as the Senate struggles to close the deal.
But the vice president's arguments for the legislation have been met with a heated backlash.
Vance arrived on Capitol Hill early Tuesday morning as he prepared to potentially cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate for the megabill tackling the president's domestic spending agenda.
The Senate is still working through a marathon session to finalize the legislation after pulling an all-nighter to vote on a series of amendments. It is not clear whether Republicans will have the votes or whether the vice president may need to break a 50-50 tie.
But Vance took to X to make his case publicly for Trump's massive bill, which wraps in immigration spending with tax cuts and other provisions while chopping Medicaid funding.
'The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,' Vance wrote in his post.
'Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,' he continued.
His take was met with fierce criticism from those against the megabill and some who supported the president's immigration agenda.
Those against the legislation were quick to seize on his line about the 'minutiae of the Medicaid,' arguing that cutting health insurance for nearly 12 million people over the next decade, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects, is not 'minutiae.'
Democrats were quick to seize on the statement.
'What happened to you @JDVance --author of Hillbilly Elegy --now shrugging off Medicaid cuts that will close rural hospitals and kick millions off healthcare as 'minutiae?'" wrote Rep. Ro Khanna.
However, GOP Senators Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins are among the Senate Republicans who have expressed concerns over the Medicaid provisions in the bill.
Tillis warned it would leave more than 663,000 people in his state without health care coverage in a fiery speech after voting against advancing the legislation.
Vance became embroiled in a social media spat with an American blogger who called him out. Matthew Yglesias wrote that millions of people losing health insurance was not 'immaterial.'
The vice president fired back, claiming Yglesias wanted to 'bankrupt Medicaid by importing millions of illegal immigrants and giving them healthcare that ought by right go to his fellow citizens.'
But the move sparked a pile-on online. Comprehensive Medicaid coverage is not available for undocumented immigrants.
While the White House has touted 1.4 million immigrants losing coverage, it is not from the Medicaid cuts. That number appears in the CBO analysis of the House version of the bill, but as multiple health care and public policy experts have pointed out, immigrants who are covered under current law are in programs funded by states, not federal Medicaid dollars.
Vance in dismissing the 'minutiae of the Medicaid policy' directly contradicted himself back in 2017 when he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times during Trump's fight to repeal Obamacare.
'The Senate bill offers a bit more to the needy, but still leaves many unable to pay for basic services. In the rosiest projections of each version, millions will be unable to pay for basic health care. This wasn't acceptable to Reagan in 1961, and it shouldn't be acceptable to his political heirs,' he wrote at the time.
While Vance took heat for the accuracy of his Medicaid claims, he was even blasted by some on the right who called him out for downplaying what they saw as the importance of kicking immigrants off health care.
Others complained that if the immigration provisions were so important, they should not have been tied up with other policies in one big bill to begin with, as the fight over Medicaid funding and government spending has put the entire package in limbo as senators work to shore up support.