Jerry Moran Pretends to Care About Kansans. If He Did, He Wouldn’t Have Voted For Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

Moran’s vote will be an indelible and lasting stain on his record

After Senate Republicans (with three exceptions) voted yesterday to advance the most atrocious budget bill in US history, the senior senator from my state of Kansas, Jerry Moran, offered up this lame justification for voting for this piece of toxic garbage.

In an email sent to his constituents, he explained that he was able to make changes to the bill to ensure that “certain Kansas hospitals will not face any immediate cuts upon enactment of this legislation.”

Note the sleight of hand here: They won’t face immediate cuts. But make no mistake: They will face cuts, and those cuts will be devastating, as I explained in my Substack yesterday. https://substack.com/home/post/p-167217775

Moran further elaborates: “This change ensures that as state directed payments wind down, Kansas providers will be starting at a higher percentage of enhanced payments buying them much-needed time to utilize federal dollars as payments are reduced.”

In other words, the senator recognizes that hospitals—and I’m assuming he’s mainly referring to rural hospitals here—are going to see their payments reduced, but not to worry! He bought them time!

“I also secured a one-year delay in the implementation of reductions to state directed payments to give Kansas more time to access these resources,” he goes on to say. “Finally, I pushed for the establishment of a rural provider fund to aid rural hospitals facing significant financial challenges. These changes and investments, along with tax cuts for Kansas families, will bolster our economy and strengthen the safety of our nation.”

What a load of weaselly BS. This is a bill that will cut federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) spending by more than a $1 trillion over the next decade and will cause at least 11.8 million Americans to lose their health insurance, according to preliminary estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

The rural provider fund Moran touts amounts to $50 billion, which sounds like a lot, but—given the bill’s staggering Medicaid cuts—doesn’t begin to undo the damage. Moreover, it does nothing to help urban health care providers caring for the vast majority of Medicaid enrollees who stand to lose their coverage.

Moran’s changes to the legislation are tantamount to a surgeon telling a patient who suffered a massive coronary that he’d removed his pesky hangnail and the patient should be feeling better any time soon.

Moran pretends to be a pragmatist as Republicans go (a highly relative term) and in fact calls his constituent newsletter “Kansas Common Sense.” But when push comes to shove, he marches in lockstep with his neo-fascist brethren, no less a trump lickspittle for pretending to be more sane than the more overtly trumpy senators.

Despite his exertions, if the final version of this bill is anything like the one passed by the Senate, Kansans will suffer mightily, notwithstanding the trivial tax cuts the bill tosses out as a sop to all but the wealthiest among us.¹

Whatever little good Moran has done on behalf of Kansas as a senator, he undid it in one fell swoop yesterday. The damage this bill will inflict on Kansans, and all Americans, will remain an indelible and lasting stain on his record.

Another Judicial Rebuke for RFK Jr.

Amid the bad news yesterday, there was a bit of good news: A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the recent massive layoffs—some 10,000 people—at the Department of Health and Human Services were likely unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose issued a preliminary injunction blocking the trump regime from finalizing its layoff plans at four subagencies of the department, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Center for Tobacco Products within the Food and Drug Administration; and the Office of Head Start within the Administration for Children and Families.

DuBose ruled after Democratic attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in May arguing that the layoffs announced by HHS Secretary and Conspiracy Crackpot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were arbitrary and outside the department’s authority.

As reported by MedPage Today, DuBose ruled that the plaintiffs had shown “irreparable harm” and were likely to prevail in their claims that “HHS’s action was both arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law.”

“The executive branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” DuBose wrote.

The trump regime will undoubtedly appeal DuBose’s order. The case could end up before the Supreme Court, which, given its abject willingness to fulfill trump’s every lawless wet dream, can’t be counted on to uphold DuBose’s order.

But at least for the time being, we have further evidence that the lower federal courts are doing their job and holding fast in their attempts to check trump’s lawless and criminal actions—even if the Supreme Court has declared war against its own judiciary.

1. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that Americans in the bottom 30% of income distribution will experience a net loss of income under the bill.