Medicaid cuts in Republican bill emerge as an early flash point for the 2026 elections

WASHINGTON — Early battle lines are forming over a centerpiece of the sprawling domestic policy bill that House Republicans narrowly passed, with Medicaid spending cuts emerging as a flash point that could define the 2026 midterm elections.

WASHINGTON — Early battle lines are forming over a centerpiece of the sprawling domestic policy bill that House Republicans narrowly passed, with Medicaid spending cuts emerging as a flash point that could define the 2026 midterm elections.

Democrats are fine-tuning their message as they blast the legislation, which now heads to the GOP-led Senate, as a tax cut for the wealthy that would be funded by cutting health care, after Republicans broadly promised they wouldn't cut Medicaid.

A recent memo from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee vows to make the GOP’s “tax scam” and Medicaid cuts “the defining contrast of the 2026 election cycle” in its efforts to win the House majority next year.

The DCCC is advising Democratic candidates to criticize the Republican bill as a Trojan horse designed to throw millions off of Medicaid — not address waste — with new red tape, said a source with knowledge of the private conversations.

And Republicans are trying to frame the fight on their terms. The National Republican Congressional Committee is advising members to tout the bill as “strengthening Medicaid” by limiting the program to those who need it — “not fraudsters, able-bodied adults who refuse to work, or illegal immigrants.”