As a swing-district member on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield)’s vote will be critical as Republicans work to approve a major proposal to cut hundreds of billions in spending and curtail some parts of Medicaid. Kean told the New Jersey Globe today that the bill, already the subject of vociferous protests from Democrats and activists, gets high marks from him.
“This is a strong bill,” Kean said in an interview. “It roots out waste, fraud, and abuse, and preserves Medicaid for its intended beneficiaries.”
The bill under discussion in the Energy & Commerce Committee is one key piece of Republicans’ broader legislative agenda to reduce government spending and lower taxes. Republicans have pitched the bill as something of a compromise, noting that it doesn’t go as far in overhauling Medicaid as some hardliners had wanted.
According to Democrats, though, the provisions of the bill related to Medicaid – including work requirements, reductions in federal funding, changed eligibility guidelines, and stricter provisions on Medicaid for undocumented immigrants – would be devastating for low-income and disabled Americans who rely on Medicaid. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) has cited numbers from the Congressional Budget Office showing that 8.6 million people would lose health coverage under the bill (13.7 million if the expiration of a separate Obamacare provision is factored in).
“Trump and the congressional Republicans promised they would not cut Medicaid benefits or strip away people’s health care,” Pallone, the leading Democrat on the Energy & Commerce Committee, said yesterday. “They lied. This does just the opposite.”
Kean, who’s likely to face a competitive race for re-election next year (and whose district is home to around 44,000 recipients of Medicaid, known in the state as NJ FamilyCare), has said repeatedly that he has no intention of cutting Medicaid benefits for those who deserve them. This bill, he argued, does exactly that, saying that Pallone’s claims amount to “fearmongering.”
“Frank Pallone has had the same rhetoric, and the same statistics, since the beginning of this year,” Kean said. “We cannot allow fearmongering – we need to preserve Medicaid, we need to protect it for its intended beneficiaries. That’s what this bill does on every front.”
(Even before he casts any vote on the bill, Kean has already come under fire from the Democrats looking to unseat him, with one national Democratic spokesperson wondering yesterday whether the congressman will “cave to the extremists and sell out his constituents yet again.”)
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) isn’t on Energy & Commerce like Kean, but he too has been a player in the Medicaid debate, threatening to withhold his vote if his party’s proposals cut too much. He said today, though, that he thinks the cuts proposed under the bill are reasonable and that he’s happy with the changes that have been made since discussions on Medicaid first began earlier this year.
“There’s always people caught in the mix when you make change,” Van Drew said. “Some people are probably justifiably getting Medicaid but haven’t kept their addresses current, and are going to have a problem, are going to be knocked off. But they can get put back on. We need to have proper accountability in how we’re giving money away – it’s taxpayer money.”
“All in all – look at where we started, look at where we are now,” he added. “This is what I asked for.”
Kean, Pallone, and Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) sat down for today’s committee hearing at around 2 p.m., and may remain there for 24 hours or more sifting through amendments and proposals before finally taking a vote. Menendez, who like Kean is still in his first months on the powerful committee, blasted Republicans for putting out proposals that would decrease, rather than increase, health care coverage.
“Unlike our friends across the aisle, we have town halls,” Menendez said in his opening remarks today. “And no one says, ‘Health care’s too affordable.’ No one says, ‘Health care in this country is too accessible, we have too much of it.’ Not one person in any of our town halls has said that. So what are we doing here today? Making it harder for 13.7 million people to get access to health care?”
Kean’s support for Energy & Commerce’s bill makes it that much easier for it to gain committee approval, but it’s also only one portion of the GOP’s larger reconciliation package. On another topic – the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap – the two-term congressman may present more of an obstacle.
Republican leaders are currently negotiating with pro-SALT Republicans on how much to raise the cap, which was implemented during Trump’s first term. A new $30,000 cap (up from $10,000) has been floated by House leadership, but Kean, who has long said he’ll vote against any tax-related bill that doesn’t include sufficient SALT relief, told the Globe that their offer doesn’t cut it for him.
“It needs to be a lot higher than that,” he said. “We need to find a number that is able to provide real relief for the families that I represent, and that number does not meet that standard.”