Jason Smith Needs to Come Home and Sniff Around

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Rep. Jason Smith, a Republican member of Congress from Missouri's 8th congressional district who also serves as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been very involved  in Trump's big, beautiful tax cut package for billionaires, major tax breaks for the country's wealthiest individuals that will be paid for with cuts to basic subsistence programs for middle class and poorer Americans - programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).  

Smith, who is strong and unwavering in his zeal to be the best emotional support animal ever for Donald Trump, has a mastery of Republican talking points and is careful to avoid situations where real journalists or actual Americans from outside the Washington DC beltway have an opportunity to ask him questions for which he does not have a canned answer at the ready.  The congressman never holds town halls and rarely appears at events where ordinary citizens have an opportunity to throw a question his way, and he restricts his media appearances to Fox, Newsmax, and a few other extreme right-wing outlets that he knows sing from the same hymnal as he does.

Congressman Jason Smith lives in a protected bubble, and that is the way he likes it.  That's why it was so stunning last month when the middle-aged congressman from Missouri accidentally said the quiet part out loud and admitted that the GOP will be cutting Medicaid through the Trump tax bill.  While shuffling through a softball Fox News interview with Will Cain, Smith inadvertently said "And then you can look at Medicaid cuts," and immediately realized that he had just admitted that his party really was cutting Medicaid despite its long-standing subterfuge that it was not, and he regrouped saying, "Medicaid reforms, I should say."

The Republican Party under the leadership of Trump and his lap dogs like Jason Smith is cutting Medicaid, and with those cuts possibly as many as eight million Americans are going to lose their healthcare coverage, suffer unnecessarily, and some will even die.  (Of course Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa piously reminds us that we are all going to die anyway.)   When eight million Americans lose their healthcare insurance, medical practices and hospitals will close, particularly in poor rural areas - places like Missouri's 8th congressional district.

And guess who we will have to thank for some of our rural healthcare providers packing up and moving elsewhere?  People like Jason Smith and his Republican colleagues in Congress, that's who!

There is, surprisingly, another Republican politician in Missouri who has a better understanding of what is at stake with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid than Congressman Smith does.  A week before Smith's Freudian slip about Medicaid "cuts," US Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri wrote an editorial for the New York Times in which he was critical of proposed "cuts"- a word the Republican senator used intentionally.

Hawley correctly stated that the deep Medicaid cuts in the Big, Beautiful (GOP) Bill as proposed by the House would harm working class Americans and lead to hospital closures - especially in rural areas.

I never thought I would say this, but Josh Hawley is right.

Jason Smith needs to come home, hold a town hall or three, and learn how his constituents live and what they depend on.  Even a foo foo lap dog should get down and sniff the ground every so ofter - and find out what the real world is all about.

No one should lose their healthcare so the richest among us can purchase another yacht, or another private jet, or another vacation home, or play more golf.

You represent Edgar Springs, Jason - not Palm Springs!  Get back to your roots!