PUT REPUBLICANS ON THE CLOCK

Soon Republicans will pass their big bill. I understand why they think they can cut Medicaid and other programs while avoiding severe electoral consequences:

At the core of Republicans’ sprawling domestic policy package is an important political calculation. It provides its most generous tax breaks early on and reserves some of its most painful benefit cuts until after the 2026 midterm elections.

On Medicaid specifically:

Republicans have pursued more aggressive changes to Medicaid, which helps low-income and disabled Americans obtain health insurance. The bill would require most adults with children age 14 or older to obtain work in order to qualify for aid, while restricting the ways that many states have financed their Medicaid programs.

The new Medicaid work rules are scheduled to take effect after the midterm elections, but the deadline is considered tight by many current and former state officials, given the enormous demands the policy offloads onto state governments to develop new systems for tracking work hours and exemptions for millions of beneficiaries.

A subsequent group of cuts kicks in starting in 2028. But let's just concentrate on the 2026 cuts. I will quote the much-despised Ezra Klein because he explains them vividly:

The way Medicaid has to save money is that somebody who would have gotten treatment for cancer, for C.O.P.D., for an aching back — whatever it might be — will now either not go get that treatment or somehow this person who was on Medicaid and was poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is going to pay for it some other way.

The federal government is implementing an onerous set of paperwork and reporting requirements where, if people who are already poor, sick or otherwise disorganized cannot or do not abide by them, when they get sick, they will not be able to get chemotherapy — or they will have to go into medical debt to get chemotherapy.

Like — why? So I can get a tax cut?

But these changes are delayed until after the midterms, so how do Democrats run against them?

Here's an idea idea I got from watching Season 4 of The Bear.

In The Bear, financial backer James "Cicero" Kalinowski places a countdown clock in the kitchen of the restaurant, as a warning to everyone working there of when the money will run out unless the restaurant's commercial prospects improve.

I think Democrats should make videos and ads that include a clock counting down to when the Medicaid changes start to kick in. Democrats should tell voters that Republicans delayed these changes in order to deceive them. Voters should think of them as a ticking time bomb.

This wouldn't be the first use of countdown clocks in American politics. There's been a National Debt Clock in midtown Manhattan since 1989. Cable news likes countdown clocks, for everything from potential U.S. debt defaults to minor-party presidential town halls.

Ordinary Americans would understand this. Democrats should do it. There might be better ways of conveying the changes that are coming, but this could do it.