The shutdown messaging conflict is in full impact, and early indications are that Republicans have been put in something of a bind, given the Democrats’ demand to increase enhanced Obamacare subsidies seems fairly standard.
So Republican leaders have returned to a really acquainted technique – making false generalizations and deceptive claims about undocumented immigrants, in an try to heart the debate on extra favorable terrain.
They’ve argued over and over once more that Democrats are attempting to supply health care to undocumented immigrants.
In truth, as NCS’s Tami Luhby has fact-checked, the modifications Democrats are looking for on Obamacare and Medicaid wouldn’t straight present protection to undocumented immigrants, since they aren’t and nonetheless wouldn’t be eligible for both program.
That’s to not say there aren’t kernels of truth behind their claims, and the challenge is sophisticated. Medicaid {dollars} do, in some conditions, find yourself paying health care prices for these in the nation with out documentation as a matter of longstanding federal regulation. But the GOP’s political technique to solid Democrats as holding authorities funding hostage over the challenge rests on a fairly Machiavellian and factually challenged effort to demonize migrants.
Let’s break it down.
After Republicans spent days largely simply making this declare with out detailing it, Vice President JD Vance stepped ahead at Wednesday’s White House press briefing to no less than put some meat on the bone.
His case boiled down to 2 issues.
His first level was that the asylum-seekers and others with momentary authorized standing who would be eligible for these applications beneath the Democrats’ shutdown-ending proposal ought to nonetheless be handled as “illegal aliens.” He mentioned this was as a result of the Biden administration granted such designations too freely.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has additionally been vehement about this declare.
“Joe Biden used executive orders, and he expanded benefits, health care to illegal aliens in his four-year term,” Johnson mentioned Thursday. “That was an outrageous violation of the existing federal law and of the principles of good stewardship.”
It’s an argument that might seemingly have loads of enchantment. Americans turned very bitter on the Biden administration’s dealing with of immigration and asylum in recent times, earlier than Biden moved to toughen up his method. A Reuters-Ipsos earlier this yr confirmed 56% of Americans wanted to “dramatically reduce” the variety of migrants allowed to say asylum at the border.
But saying these migrants ought to be thought-about “illegal” – even when Republicans genuinely consider that – doesn’t make them so, no less than beneath present regulation.
To the extent Republicans need to deal with them as unlawful, they might take different steps to attempt to strip them of authorized standing. Unless and till they do, although, these folks have authorized standing beneath US regulation and aren’t “illegal aliens.”
Vance’s second level was that there is no less than a technique by which federal {dollars} can be utilized to pay for the health care of immigrants who’re really undocumented – i.e. not simply courses of people that he would favor to deal with as such.
A federal regulation known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates that any hospital that receives Medicare funds should deal with anybody requiring emergency remedy, no matter capability to pay, insurance coverage or authorized standing. And the federal authorities reimburses hospitals for this remedy.
Vance painted undocumented immigrants in emergency rooms as a scourge, connecting it to longer ready instances as a result of “very often, somebody who’s there in the emergency room waiting is an illegal alien.”
But in reality, new information reveals federal reimbursements for emergency care for undocumented migrants is a minuscule portion of emergency Medicaid spending – only about 0.4% in Fiscal Year 2023, in line with KFF.
And past that, it’s price noting that this isn’t only a matter of federal regulation, however a federal regulation signed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Republicans of their agenda invoice earlier this yr sought to scale back federal Emergency Medicaid funding; their argument is basically that the transfer lowered a doable incentive hospitals might need to prioritize care for undocumented immigrants. But Democrats level out that simply shifts prices to states and hospitals themselves, given they’re nonetheless legally required to supply the care. That’s until and till EMTALA is repealed.
That additionally raises some maybe uncomfortable questions for the administration.
For one, the subsequent logical query is whether or not Vance and Republicans would favor that hospitals not present doubtlessly life-saving care to undocumented migrants who’re severely sick, maybe simply permitting them to die.
An reply Thursday from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed how tough these questions develop into. She was requested if hospitals ought to ask for proof of citizenship earlier than treating a dying affected person, and she responded, “That’s probably not a question for me to answer.”
And secondly, it reinforces that even Trump’s agenda invoice nonetheless allowed for federal cash to circulate to giving undocumented migrants emergency health care. It was only a extra restricted quantity that shifted the burden to states and hospitals.
Republicans have additionally more and more argued that some blue states are transferring cash round in such a means that they’re successfully utilizing federal Medicaid funds beneath the guise of state funding for undocumented health care. Leavitt on Friday accused California of “a gimmick that funds its Medicaid for illegals program.”
But as Luhby famous, a provision that might have penalized states that purportedly do that was stripped from Trump’s agenda invoice. The regulation does remove states’ capability to get a sure waiver associated to the taxes that states can cost sure suppliers to assist pay for Medicaid, however the provision isn’t particularly about undocumented immigrants.
As these claims have been fact-checked, Republicans have more and more turned to a different, separate argument.
They’ve famous that, throughout the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, most of the prime candidates supported overlaying undocumented immigrants with authorities health care. Vance, Leavitt and many different Republicans have pointed to a clip from a debate, by which the candidates all raised their arms in help of such a coverage.
And this is true. It’s certainly one of a lot of positions Democrats staked out throughout that marketing campaign to enchantment to the political left that they most likely want they hadn’t. (Many such solutions got here again to chew Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential marketing campaign.)
“Don’t let the Democrats lie to you,” Republicans Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota said Thursday on X. “In a 2019 debate, every Democrat candidate raised their hand in support of taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants. Now, they have shut down the government over it.”
Johnson added Thursday: “Those hands included Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Now, what did they do? Did they follow through on that promise? Yeah, they absolutely did.”
He clarified that he meant Biden expanded those that had been eligible for such protection by permitting them to acquire no less than momentary authorized standing. So once more, the argument appears to be extra that these folks shouldn’t have been given authorized standing fairly than that they’re at present undocumented in a authorized sense.
And simply because these Democrats expressed that view again then doesn’t imply it has any impression on the present debate. Republicans would argue that this betrays Democrats’ long-term intentions. But it’s not what Democrats are at present asking for out of a shutdown deal; they’re primarily pushing for extra beneficiant federal subsidies to assist Americans afford Obamacare insurance policies. (And certainly, it appears extremely unlikely that Democrats would view any transfer to close down the authorities over undocumented immigrants’ health care as sensible or sensible politics right this moment.)
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona has even mentioned Democrats would help language making doubly certain that any protection wouldn’t be prolonged to the undocumented.
“We are willing to pass anything in law that says people in this country illegally should not be receiving any benefits, subsidies, anything,” Gallego told Semafor.
It’s not unusual for politicians to attempt to spin debates in phrases which can be extra favorable to their facet. To a sure diploma, it’s politics as typical.
But what we’ve more and more seen in the Trump-era GOP is a extra shameless and nearly unflinching willingness to say no matter is most advantageous in the second, regardless of if it misleads Americans about the very actual points in an necessary debate.
The get together has more and more warmed to the ways of a president who not solely uttered more than 30,000 false and misleading claims in his first time period, in line with the Washington Post, however really obtained considerably extra counterfactual as time went on.
Perhaps the epitome of this method got here in 2024. The Trump marketing campaign not solely unfold unfounded claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio consuming folks’s pets that even native Republicans rejected; Vance successfully acknowledged willingly spreading misinformation – whereas arguing that the ends justified the means.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people,” Vance informed NCS’s Dana Bash, “then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana. Because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
You may perceive why Republicans really feel the want to regulate the phrases of the debate right here, given the enhanced Obamacare subsidy extensions Democrats are pushing for are overwhelmingly standard.
A KFF ballot launched Friday confirmed 78% of Americans and even 57% of MAGA Republicans supported extending them. A Washington Post poll launched a day earlier confirmed 47% of Americans believed Trump and the Republicans had been “mainly responsible” for the shutdown, in comparison with 30% who blamed Democrats. That’s considerably counterintuitive, given Democrats are the ones who gained’t signal on to a clear invoice to maintain the authorities open.
But it doesn’t change the proven fact that Americans aren’t getting an entire and correct image of the stakes.