April 10, 2025 10:24 AM UTC

"Nut-Cutting Time" Has Arrived For Gabe Evans On Cutting Medicaid

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• by: Colorado Pols

Politico reports on this morning’s vote in the U.S. House passing the Senate’s version of a budget framework resolution that paves the way for, assuming lawmakers in the respective committees meet the targets in the resolution for massive reductions in spending, President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” to cut trillions from the federal budget while somehow not negatively impacting anything anyone cares about.

Just kidding, it’s going to hurt, and next comes the step where the hypothetical harm gets put into line-item reality:

The House finally approved a budget Thursday, uncorking the filibuster-skirting power Republicans need to build and enact President Donald Trump’s dream bill along party lines this year.

The final vote was 216-214, with two Republicans — Reps. Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky —joining all Democrats in voting “no.”

Now Republicans on both sides of the Capitol can begin the even-heavier lift of writing — and then whipping support for — the behemoth package of tax cuts, military spending, energy policy, border security investments and more. That process will pit fiscal hawks against moderate Republicans as GOP leaders try to square their conflicting demands to protect safety-net programs like Medicaid while cutting trillions of dollars from that slice of the federal budget.

For over a month since the passage of the House’s version of the budget resolution, Republicans were able to deflect questions about how they could achieve the targeted spending cuts without major cuts to bedrock social safety net programs like Medicaid with anecdotes about “waste and abuse”–anedotes that even if added together amount to a fraction of the amount that will need to be cut. Every responsible analysis of the budget resolution has shown conclusively that reductions far beyond any identifiable waste will be necessary to meet the targets specified in the resolution.

With the passage of this budget resolution, Colorado’s most vulnerable Republican in Congress Rep. Gabe Evans now faces the task in his role on the House Energy and Commerce Committee of taking the $880 billion prescribed cut he voted for this morning and making the actual cuts to the funds under his committee’s purvue to achieve that target. This is where Evans’ many deflections on the subject, including legislation he is co-sponsoring “targeting” whatever waste and abuse that can be found, will hit the wall of reality.

And the “waste and abuse” deflection is not going to be sufficient. Those words have yet to pass Rep. Evans’ lips, but if the committee he serves on fulfills the budget reduction goals Evans voted for this morning, it’s going to be obvious to everyone whether Evans admits it or not. As we’ve pointed out before, Evans’ appointment as a freshman representative to the Energy and Commerce Committee was considered somewhat of an unusual honor, the first such appointment in over a decade. Now we can see why vulnerable freshmen should perhaps not be put on the committees making these hard calls.

Rep. Gabe Evans’ next job is to help write the bill that could very well end his career.