Why Won’t the Political Class Make Meaningful Cuts

Dave Brat: "Well, doubt is what you’re seeing in all the major headlines right now. We haven’t cut any money. And yet, all the headlines say we’re destroying the environment, we’re gutting Medicaid, Medicare, and all that. It’s all completely false. Natalie Winters showed that last night. In fact, the opposite is true. There’s a chunk of corruption—$10 to $20 billion—in Medicaid payments to California meant for illegal immigrants.

There’s also corruption in USAID. We send money to Africa and then make poor Africans funnel that money back to Democratic operatives in this country. We have receipts for all of this, so the American people are disgusted.

And what’s the doubt? It’s the same as always—I’ve been saying it for ten years. They sidelined me. They play isolated political plays state by state. The Speaker of the House needs to come out with a national message for America, and the Senate needs to do the same—and that message needs to align with Trump. But they don’t do that. They’re playing preemptive defense, like in sports. And everyone knows how the game ends when you do that.

We’ve got basically the same budget numbers filed that we’ve had for the last 30 years. Nothing new is going to change because they’re afraid of the midterm elections. And they should be afraid, because Trump showed the way forward: you make big, bold proposals that people love—and then you win. But they’re not doing that. They don’t want to message on any of this. There’s corruption everywhere. The American people are overwhelmingly against the swamp."