Democrats were virtually salivating as they unanimously voted against Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act ahead of the Independence Day holiday, which certainly should give pause to Republicans as they prepare for the midterms and the 2028 elections beyond.

What gives the Democrats hope that they can campaign effectively against Trump’s mega-bill? Is it the fact that Republicans were able to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts? Are they planning to campaign against the “no tax on tips” provision that even Kamala Harris supported? Will they claim that funding border security and mass deportation of illegal aliens is somehow bad for the country?

Remember, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the codification of the agenda that President Trump ran on in 2024. It’s not tricky. It’s not nefarious.

No, no, and no. Democrats are not idiots. They know that they have the short straw on all of those 80-20 issues. So they are going back to the same issue they have demagogued since 2008 — health care. By tugging on the heartstrings of the American public, they know they can use fear to win votes.

Demagoguing Medicaid ... again

During debate in both the House and Senate, Democrats relied on questionable forward-looking interpretations of the impact of the mega-bill on Medicaid to claim that nearly 12 million low-income people would lose health coverage if the bill passed, as it ultimately did.

The left-leaning Congressional Budget Office supplied some of that data, and by the time the vote was finalized on July 3, various other groups were adding fuel to the fire. KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, added the 12 million people who would allegedly lose Medicaid to the five million who KFF claimed would lose coverage in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, concluding that at least 17 million would be at risk. Then, there was the claim that Trump’s budget would deny food stamps to hungry children and pregnant women.

But not so fast. Despite the bleak picture painted by Democrats and weak-kneed RINOs that Trump wanted poor people to just die and be done with it, there were reasonable explanations for all the budget changes that had nothing to do with genocide.

Reductions in Obamacare premium subsidies are just an acknowledgment that the COVID crisis is over, and those boosted premiums are no longer necessary. Likewise, food stamps are still going to be provided to the disabled, families with young children, and the impoverished elderly, even if Democrats want to pretend otherwise.

And pretend they will, so if Republicans want to prevail in future elections, they had better fully understand the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, because otherwise, they will be painted as heartless elitists who want their fellow Americans to die by the millions.

Telling the truth

Fortunately, the road map is already clear on how to respond to the demagoguery of the Democrats, and it was modeled by two members of the Trump administration on the Sunday morning talk shows over the long holiday weekend.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, faced down their hostile questioners on CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” respectively.

Bessent, who by all accounts is the most competent member of Trump’s Cabinet, immediately pushed back on Dana Bash’s supposition that the bill would cut benefit programs like Medicaid:

Only in D.C. is a 20% hike over 10 years a cut. Medicaid funding will go up 20% over the next 10 years. The people who Medicaid was designed for — the pregnant women, the disabled, and families with children under 14 — will be refocused. The able-bodied Americans are not vulnerable Americans, so a work requirement or a community service requirement, that’s very popular with the public.

Bessent then struck a blow against the argument that millions of Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage because they didn’t remember to reapply for benefits under the new rules.

“It is a group of Democrats who unfortunately seem to think that poor people are stupid,” he said. “I don’t think poor people are stupid. I think they have agency, and I think to have them register twice a year for these benefits is not a burden. But these people who want to infantilize the poor and those who need these Medicaid benefits are alarmist.”

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Photo by Tom Brenner For the Washington Post via Getty Images

Over on “Face the Nation,” Hassett was interviewed by Weijia Jiang, senior White House correspondent for CBS. She dutifully recited the claim that 12 million people would lose their Medicaid coverage, but Hassett struck back hard:

Let’s unbundle that a little bit. What we are actually doing is asking for a work requirement, but the work requirement is that you need to be looking for work or even doing volunteer work, and you don’t need to do it until your kids are 14 or older, so the idea that that’s going to cause a massive hemorrhaging in availability of insurance doesn’t make a lot of sense. And if you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the numbers they say are going to lose insurance, about five million of those are people who have other insurance. ... If they lose one, they’re still insured.

Hassett also explained that the best way to get insurance is to get a job, and so if the Trump economy stimulates growth, it will help people to happily leave Medicaid after they gain employment.

On another question, about whether the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is harmful because it grows the national debt by between $3 trillion and $5 trillion over the next 10 years, Hassett responded by reminding the reporter that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating growth in the economy compared to what happened in the first Trump term pre-COVID. Based on that historical record, Hassett expects the debt to actually shrink by $1.5 trillion in the next decade.

What Hassett didn’t say, but which should be on the lips of every Republican defending their votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is that over the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, the federal debt increased by more than $17.5 trillion. Admittedly, Trump’s first term played a role in that thanks to COVID, but only Trump and Republicans are making any effort today to shrink the debt. If left up to Democrats, every social program in the budget would see increased funding, deficit be damned.

Fight fear with facts

To summarize, here are the talking points that every Republican candidate for Congress must master if they hope to beat back Democrat distortions:

1. Republicans voted to increase Medicaid spending over the next 10 years by 20%.
2. Republicans voted to preserve Medicaid for the needy by making sure that everyone using the program’s valuable resources is truly needy — and eligible.
3. Republicans voted to create an economy where more people can get jobs that provide high-quality health insurance. Emphasize this: Jobs are good.
4. Republicans treat Medicaid recipients with dignity, asking them to follow simple rules to qualify for the benefit, rather than treating them as helpless wards of the state.
5. Republicans are bending the curve downward on the national debt. Even if the CBO is right that the debt will increase by $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, that increase is only 20% of what it was over the previous 10 years. And the Trump tax cuts are expected to stimulate the economy, so the national debt should actually decrease.

Those will do for a start. Remember, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the codification of the agenda that President Trump ran on in 2024. It’s not tricky. It’s not nefarious. And if it is unpopular, that’s only because Democrats have been lying about it.

Now, it’s up to Republicans to fight back against the big Medicaid lie, or else pay the price for their silence.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.