Episode #14 Deep Dive: Trump’s Budget Bill Aftershocks: Profiteering and Ghoulishness
A deep dive into this week's episode of Paging America
One Big, Ghoulish Grift
In the aftermath of the passage of President Trump’s budget bill and billionaire tax giveaway, we got a firsthand look at how craven, and sometimes ghoulish, some Republicans truly are.
Some of them swore up and down they would never support a bill that does the things that the Trump budget bill actually does (cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare and tosses nearly 12 million people off their health insurance) and then proceeded to vote FOR it. Here’s a sampling:
Sen. Josh Hawley before the vote: “We must ignore calls to cut Medicaid and start delivering on America’s promise for America’s working people.”
Derrick Van Orden (WI-03) – In a now deleted tweet, responded “YES!” to a tweet pointing out the terrible harm the bill does to millions of Americans:
(Van Orden has an excellent Democratic opponent named Rebecca Cook.)
Eight moderate Republicans sent a letter about their ‘concerns’ about cutting Medicaid to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Majority Leader Michael Johnson, pushing them to protect the health insurance safety net program ahead of their final “Yes” votes.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06) said he would fight against the closure of rural hospitals in Arizona, saying “hospitals would close” under the Senate’s version of the bill. He then voted for the bill that will hasten the closure of rural hospitals in Arizona
Right before the vote, Rep. Jen Kiggans (VA-02) claimed the budget bill “protects, strengthens, and preserves Medicaid” despite expressing concerns about this exact bill 10 days prior.
Rep. Robert Bresnahan (PA-08), a signer of the letter from eight moderate Republicans mentioned above, sold off his Centene Corp. stock in anticipation of the bill passing, a bill that he himself voted for. (More on Bresnahan’s corrupt action below.)
Rep. Chuck Edwards (NC-11) got a $1.1M PPP loan – with 100% forgiveness – and then voted to cut health care for millions of Americans, bemoaning government handouts: “You can’t cut something from someone who is… no longer eligible to receive it… Work requirements are not a punishment. They’re a path to dignity and independence.”
In February 2025, Rep. Young Kim (CA-40) , said, “I want to be very clear, I understand how important Medicaid is for many of my constituents to access health care services… A budget bill that does not protect vital Medicaid services… will not receive my vote.” It did, in fact, receive her vote.
“Nero selling lumber while Rome is burning.”
Let’s dig a bit more into Rep. Bresnahan’s selling of his Centene Corp. stock prior to the vote on Trump’s budget bill. Centene Corp. is one of the largest insurance companies in the Medicaid sector. In fact, Medicaid is its largest single source of revenue. After entering 2025 in a good position, the company announced in July that it was withdrawing its 2025 earnings guidance entirely due to unexpected higher Medicaid costs and the impending budget bill. This was an unprecedented move that shocked the financial world. The shareholder advocacy group Hagens Berman said that Centene investors saw over $11 billion of shareholder value wiped out in a single day because of it.
But not Bresnahan. Seemingly due, at least in part, to his advance knowledge that the gutting of Medicaid was imminent, he was able to unload his stock and not join the other investors in the financial bloodbath.
Speaking to Newsweek, University at Buffalo finance professor Veljko Fotak described the trade as inappropriate. "It does suggest he thought the value of the shares would tank.” Fotak also had this to say:
His position allowed him to be a better judge of that probability than you or I. He did not have clear foresight—but he did have an unfair advantage, compared to other traders.
I will also say – the moral optics are made worse by the nature of the event. Profiting from inside information regarding the likelihood of legislation passing is ugly enough—when that inside information is about millions of individuals losing access to Medicare, the optics are somehow even worse.... This is Nero selling lumber while Rome is burning.
Like we said: Ghoulish.
The post-Eisenhower Republican Party fever-dream come to life
The passage of this incredibly cruel bill is historic and the transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the most wealthy Americans is jaw-dropping:
But, looked at over the course of the past century, Trump’s budget bill is simply the culmination of a long-term effort by Republicans to prevent the formation of and, failing that, dismantling the social safety net to benefit the super-rich. It’s the post-Eisenhower Republican Party fever-dream come to life, creating a New Gilded Age that robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and Jay Gould would have envied.
Since the creation of Social Security in the mid-1930s and, through an amendment to the Social Security law, Medicaid/Medicare by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, Republicans have been fighting the creation of a social safety net. In 2013, Congressman John Dingle told NPR, “The Republicans hated both Social Security and Medicare like the devil hates holy water… Medicare passed with substantial Republican support, but only after they did everything that they could to kill it.”
When the Aid to Dependent Children program (now called Aid to Families with Dependent Children) was created in the 1930s, it was designed to support mostly white, widowed mothers suffering in the Great Depression. It wasn’t until the 1960s and the rise of the Civil Rights movement that Republicans tried to kill it. Because that’s when poor Black Americans became able to access these same benefits.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan popularized the idea of the so-called “Welfare Queen”, usually portrayed as a Black, single woman living large off welfare checks without having to work.
Now Republicans have done what no previous Congress has been able to do: cut the legs out from under our most vulnerable citizens – children, the poor, the sick, and the elderly – while enriching their wealthy benefactors at the same time. They’ve used language similar to Reagan, accusing millions of so-called “able-bodied” Medicaid health insurance beneficiaries of refusing to work and characterizing Medicaid as if it is a check they receive every month.