Sherman: Who Are New Hampshire Republicans: Are They The Company They Keep?

By TOM SHERMAN, InDepth NH

Who are New Hampshire Republicans: Are they the company they keep?

Sen. Joni Ernst is in New Hampshire this weekend, speaking at a NHGOP fundraiser to set up her own political future just days after she showed the entire country how little she cares about the future or wellbeing of hardworking Americans.

“Well, we all are going to die” is the tone deaf quip Sen. Ernst had to offer last week, in response to a constituent who expressed concern over how the devastating cuts to Medicaid in the GOP budget plan will cause people to perish. And when Iowans rightly recoiled at her cruelty, she didn’t apologize — she doubled down. She filmed an odd and sarcastic video from a cemetery, mocking the real harm these policies would cause for the most vulnerable people nationwide.

Ernst’s comments aren’t just offensive — they reveal the cold, hard truth about what’s driving her and her party. This is the face of today’s Republican leadership: flippant about life-or-death consequences and more concerned about protecting billionaire tax breaks than protecting families.

As it stands, the House-passed GOP budget would rip health care away from nearly 15 million Americans. Here in New Hampshire, nearly 200,000 people depend on Medicaid, including half of all nursing home residents. Under the Republican plan, more than 60,000 people and 30,000 children will lose their access to Medicaid as a result of the changes. 20,000 of those losses will come just from the GOP’s burdensome and costly new paperwork requirements for Medicaid and SNAP alone. Insurance premiums will rise for the 65,117 small business owners and residents who purchase their health care through the ACA marketplace due to the loss of the premium tax credits. New Hampshire hospitals — especially those in rural areas — will be at risk of major staff cuts and closure as well.

These aren’t just statistics – they’re real lives and families and communities at risk. But the damage doesn’t stop at health care. 1 in 18 people in New Hampshire — nearly 76,000 residents — rely on SNAP benefits to feed their families. The Republican budget would slash this nutrition assistance, sending children to bed hungry and forcing seniors and veterans to decide between eating and paying for housing. Worse yet, it will do so while pushing massive new costs onto states that also blow up our budget and lead to even deeper cuts and property tax hikes at the local level.

Why would any elected officials pile all of this additional harm onto families already facing increasing costs of essentials and economic uncertainty? So the GOP can fund more tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. How shameful. Budgets are moral documents — they show who we stand with and who we leave behind. In supporting this Federal budget, Republican leaders like Joni Ernst are. proving that they believe tax breaks for billionaires are worth more than the lives and livelihoods of everyday families.

So who really are the Republicans leading New Hampshire? Senator Ernst’s dismissive attitude towards the well-being of the most vulnerable and the real-world experience of working people couldn’t be more out of step with our values. Do New Hampshire Republicans stand up for those Granite State values, putting their people and their communities first, or do they stand side by side with Joni Ernst, putting tax cuts for the wealthy above the well-being of their hard-working neighbors? Are NH Republicans the company they keep?

Dr. Tom Sherman, Rye, NH tomshermannh@gmail.com.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.