ALPHA, NEW JERSEY — House Republican Conference chair Lisa McClain is going on offense, arguing Republicans should take Democrats’ Medicaid attack lines head-on when talking to voters about President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
McClain, the fourth-highest ranking House Republican visited swing districts in northeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Wednesday as part of a nationwide campaign to highlight the wins in Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment. During her three-district tour through the northeast that focused on the law’s tax relief and manufacturing policies, McClain told reporters she is eager to combat Democrats’ messaging around Medicaid — and argued that the party’s unified opposition to rooting out waste and abuse in the program would backfire politically.
“I’m going to take anybody on this Medicaid [attack line] straight up,” McClain told reporters in a diner in Republican New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s battleground district Wednesday. “We are protecting Medicaid for the people who need it most.”
“If you are getting Medicaid fraudulently, if you are spamming the system, you are doggone right [that] I’m taking away those benefits,” McClain continued in a defense of Republicans’ reforms, which will add work requirements to the program and more frequent eligibility checks to prevent duplicative enrollment. “The Democrats think that’s a bad thing. We’re gonna make them own that house.”
McClain’s efforts to woo the public on the president’s signature law comes as Democrats are working overtime to roll out their own pre-midterms messaging characterizing the law as a malicious scheme to slash benefits for the poor to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
The liberal outside spending group Unrig Our Economy announced a $200,000 ad buy in Kean’s district hammering the two-term lawmaker for allegedly cutting Medicaid benefits. The ad campaign suggests that Kean’s vote in favor of the “big, beautiful” law will lead to children with disabilities losing Medicaid benefits and “cut the future” of thousands of New Jerseyans.
McClain slammed the ad as a “flat-out lie” and argued that Republicans should not apologize “one iota” for their efforts to strengthen the program for the entitlement program’s intended beneficiaries.
Voters also appear to broadly support Medicaid work requirements — ensuring able-bodied adults have to work, be seeking work, or engaging in other activities at least 20 hours a week — according to recent polling.
“I want to make sure that the person who has a disabled child, that Medicaid is there for that person who needs it,” McClain told reporters. “So the people that are saying who are worried about they should be sending us a thank you card, because we are protecting Medicaid for people that need it the most.”
Kean agreed, telling reporters Wednesday that his vote protected hospitals, nursing homes and the intended beneficiaries of Medicaid in New Jersey.
“Democrats have been fearmongering on this issue since January,” Kean told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It was wrong when they first started it, and it’s wrong now.”
While McClain and Kean argue the truth in the Medicaid messaging fight is on Republicans’ side — and have highlighted a new $50 billion rural hospital stabilization fund to alleviate any impacts on medical providers — Democrats show no apparent signs of altering their messaging.
“There’s a reason the New Jersey Hospital Association called Congressman Kean’s Medicaid cuts a ‘devastating step backward for healthcare’ that will cause ‘hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans [to] lose their healthcare coverage,’” Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal told the DCNF. “The law Congressman Kean voted for cuts health care for hundreds of thousands of working people, full stop.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), House Republicans’ campaign arm, hit back in a statement to the DCNF.
“Democrats are desperately lying about Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill because they know the truth: Rep. Kean’s vote to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicaid is a huge win for New Jerseyans,” NRCC Spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole said. “He is protecting and preserving this critical program, and no amount of ridiculous Democrat spin can change that.”
The NRCC has urged Republicans not to let their Democratic counterparts control the narrative on Medicaid during the August district work period.
“All the Democrats have right now is fearmongering,” McClain added at the diner. “That’s all they have.”
McClain said the purpose of her tour is to begin to help voters connect the dots about how the law’s tax relief provisions are going to put more money in the pocketbooks.
“We believe in letting people keep more of their money, and they know what better to do with their money than the government,” McClain said. “Let’s not forget that the Democrats voted for the largest tax increase, they voted no tax [deduction] on overtime — they voted no on that.”
The average family with two children in New Jersey can expect to see higher take-home pay of at least $8,600 with the “big, beautiful” law’s passage, according to analysis by the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).
In the stop at the diner, McClain wanted to know if the small business owners were starting to feel the impact of the legislation Congress spent the first six months of the year working to pass. Around 5% of New Jersey’s workforce are in occupations that could benefit from no taxes on tips and 21% of New Jersey’s working population regularly work overtime and could claim the overtime pay tax deduction, according to the CEA.
“What I want to make sure is — I think we put together really good policy — but do the people that it affects feel [it]?” McClain said during a conversation with Kean at the diner.
Brenda, one of the owners of the diner who manages a small staff of four who cover shifts seven days a week, said she and her team were already beginning to look into the new federal income tax deduction for tips that will be retroactive to the beginning of the 2025 tax year.
“That’s why we’re doing this,” McClain told reporters. “We’re connecting it.”
However, McClain acknowledged that Republicans have more work to do to reach a large segment of the public about the legislation’s contents before the midterms. She is planning more stops in the coming months.
Two older women sitting in the diner — who were unaware they were sitting tables away from the fourth-highest ranking House Republican while eating a late morning breakfast — illustrated the challenge that Republicans face in reaching a wide swath of Americans about the budget bill.
They were supportive of the president, but had not heard about his signature legislative accomplishment nor the law’s contents, such as a new $6,000 bonus deduction for seniors. They knew little about their congressman, who helped deliver a major win for the district by scoring a new $40,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap in the president’s sweeping law, up from the current $10,000 deduction.
They qualified that Kean would still likely get their votes during the midterms.
“He’s in the right party,” one woman remarked.
Caden Olson contributed to this report.
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