Joni Ernst’s ‘Well, we all are going to die,’ and the GOP’s flippant defenses of Trump’s agenda

One of the reasons politicians don’t often engage in massive overhauls of the American economy is that it’s very difficult to defend a massive overhaul of the American economy. However good any given plan is, it often produces losers and – even in the best of cases – some short-term pain.

One of the reasons politicians don’t often engage in massive overhauls of the American economy is that it’s very difficult to defend a massive overhaul of the American economy. However good any given plan is, it often produces losers and – even in the best of cases – some short-term pain. And repeatedly now as President Donald Trump has launched multiple massive overhauls, prominent Republicans have learned that the hard way. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa is the most recent. Appearing at a town hall on Friday, Ernst was pressed on cuts to Medicaid – the health care program for low-income Americans – in House Republicans’ budget plan. One audience member shouted that “people will die.” The usual politician thing would have been to take issue with that premise – or to, as other Republicans have strained to do, cast the Medicaid cuts as merely cutting waste and abuse. (That’s not the full story, of course; the Congressional Budget Office recently projected that House Republicans’ changes to Medicaid, including work requirements for some recipients, would leave 7.6 million Americans uninsured by 2034.) But Ernst decided to go in a different direction.