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catherine cortez masto
'New Name, Still Cuts Medicaid': GOP Attempts Rebrand of Healthcare-Slashing Budget Bill Amid Dismal Polls
"Hey, so changing what you call this bill actually doesn’t change the harm that’s in it," said one Democratic senator. "Hope this helps!"
Sep 03, 2025
The Republican Party's massive budget law has shown itself to be decidedly unpopular with voters, as polls consistently show Americans opposed to its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid.
Because of this, reported Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, US President Donald Trump met with GOP members of Congress on Wednesday morning to discuss how to boost the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act's popularity.
According to Sherman, Trump's message to the GOP is that the bill will become popular if "they completely rebrand it and talk about it differently."
Politico similarly reported that Republicans in Congress have been eager to rebrand the bill after enduring "a spate of angry crowds at... town halls and alarming polling that shows dismal views of the bill's safety-net cuts and deficit impact."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) faced angry constituents who yelled, "You cut our healthcare!" and called him a liar when he claimed the Medicaid cuts would improve healthcare services. Other Republicans have been confronted with similar outrage at town halls.
Republican pollsters are reportedly recommending that GOP lawmakers tout provisions in the bill such as eliminating taxes on some tips, although worker advocacy organization One Fair Wage has found that this provision won't benefit most tipped workers since two-thirds of them don't earn enough money to file federal income taxes.
In fact, New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni noted that Republicans started referring to the package as the "working families tax plan" after getting out of their Tuesday morning meeting.
But critics in the Democratic Party argued that a simple rebrand of the legislation is unlikely to be enough to rescue it in the court of public opinion, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) emphasizing that the problems with the law stem not from marketing, but from its substance.
"The poorest 25% of workers lose money under this bill while the richest Americans get a $270,000 tax cut," he wrote while sharing a chart of Congressional Budget Office estimates of the impact the law will have on different income groups. "They can rebrand all they want. The facts are the facts. They screwed working people to help their billionaire and corporate donors."
Several other Democratic lawmakers similarly pounced to mock the GOP's attempted rebrand.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) sardonically offered advice to her Republican colleagues, writing: "Hey, so changing what you call this bill actually doesn’t change the harm that’s in it. Hope this helps!"
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) suggested a more accurate renaming of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would be the “Tax on Working Families” plan.
"Under the GOP tax law, billionaires got the big tax cuts. In fact, thanks to Republicans, many working families will actually see their taxes go up," said Beyer. "And Trump's tariffs are a huge tax hike on working Americans."
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) ridiculed the White House for "desperately" trying to rebrand the package because "working families think the GOP's plan to sacrifice their healthcare and SNAP benefits to give billionaires a tax cut is a bad idea."
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Senate Dems Rip GOP's Sneaky 'Multibillion-Dollar Bailout' for Big Pharma
"Because of you and congressional Republicans, seniors will continue to face astronomical, unaffordable costs for lifesaving cancer treatments," said Sens. Ron Wyden and Catherine Cortez Masto.
Aug 04, 2025
Two Democratic senators on Monday tore into their Republican counterparts for "sneaking" a provision into their party's massive budget legislation that they said would provide a "multibillion dollar bailout" for the American pharmaceutical industry.
In a letter sent to U.S. President Donald Trump, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) pointed out that the budget package "includes provisions that block or delay the Trump administration from using Medicare drug price negotiation to lower the price of certain blockbuster drugs" including "the top-selling cancer drugs in the world, such as Keytruda, Opdivo, Darzalex, and more."
The senators explained that Keytruda was originally due to become subject to Medicare price negotiations starting next year, but that has now been put on ice by the GOP's legislation.
"We see no policy rationale whatsoever for delaying the... ability to negotiate lower prices on these drugs other than handing money over to the industry," they charged. "Because of you and congressional Republicans, seniors will continue to face astronomical, unaffordable costs for lifesaving cancer treatments."
The senators noted the cruel irony of this gift to the pharmaceutical industry was that Republicans offset its cost by slashing roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, a move that's projected to strip health insurance from millions of Americans.
"Republicans were able to find billions of dollars to bailout the pharmaceutical industry in their multitrillion tax bill, but you claimed that fiscal austerity required you to enact the largest healthcare cuts in history, terminating coverage for more than 15 million Americans and hiking healthcare costs for everyone, even imposing a 'sick tax' on the lowest income Americans," the senators argued. "Republicans' budget bill benefited the ultrawealthy and big corporations, like Big Pharma, with tax cuts and bailouts at the expense of working and middle-class Americans' healthcare."
The senators also slammed Trump's decision to eschew Medicare price negotiations of the kind first employed by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration after the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that authorized such negotiations for a limited set of drugs for the first time. Instead, they pointed out that Trump has demanded pharmaceutical companies cut prices on Americans by raising them everywhere else in the world, which they described as a "flashy, empty announcement."
Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, similarly dismissed Trump's recent letters to pharmaceutical companies last week as a completely ineffective approach to lowering prescription drug costs.
"If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world," he said.
Trump in recent days has been making a number of mathematically impossible promises to lower the cost of drugs for Americans by as much as "1,200%," which would mean that pharmaceutical companies would be paying Americans substantial sums of money in exchange for taking their drugs.
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Billionaire Nicole Shanahan Demands Senators Confirm RFK Jr.—Or Else
"I know entitled rich people think they can buy Nevada's Senate seat—they can't," said one Democratic senator. "I work for Nevada, not billionaires like Nicole Shanahan."
Jan 30, 2025
Nicole Shanahan, the billionaire former running mate of erstwhile Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is threatening political retribution against any senator who does not vote to confirm Kennedy as Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's health and human services secretary.
This week, Shanahan vowed to "personally fund" primary challenges against senators who don't support Kennedy's nomination to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
"This is a bipartisan message, and it comes directly from me," Shanahan said in a video posted Monday on the social media platform X. "While Bobby may be willing to play nice, I won't."
Shanahan specifically admonished more than a dozen senators, including Democrats, Republicans, and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
"The two candidates I helped elect, Sen. Raphael Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff, please know I will be watching your votes very closely,” she said, singling out the two Georgia Democrats. "I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate if you vote against the future health of America's children."
At least one senator responded to Shanahan's threat. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)
said on social media Wednesday: "Big Pharma spent millions against me and I didn't back down. Koch spent millions against me, I didn't back down. I know entitled rich people think they can buy Nevada's Senate seat—they can't. I work for Nevada, not billionaires like Nicole Shanahan."
Shanahan—who reportedly gained most of her wealth from her previous marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin—poured millions of dollars of her own money into Kennedy's longshot presidential campaign before the conspiracy theorist chose her as his running mate. She was also among the early voices urging Kennedy to drop his independent White House bid and throw his support behind Trump, as he ultimately did.
Before that, Shanahan donated to prominent Democratic politicians including the party's presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, in 2016 and former President Joe Biden in 2020. Kennedy, the son of former Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (Mass.) and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy—both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s—was also a longtime Democrat prior to his switch last year.
A wide range of public health experts oppose Kennedy's nomination. Last month, a group of 75 Nobel laureates urged senators to reject his appointment, citing his deadly history of amplifying discredited conspiracy theories and his "lack of credentials or relevant experience in medicine, science, public health, or administration."
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