RESIDENTS of Columbus, Indiana awoke last week to a yellow billboard purchased by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) blaring: “Under Trump‘s Watch, Columbus Regional Health is Cutting Medical Services.”
Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which oversees races for the United States House of Representatives, last month launched a digital ad campaign touting President Donald Trump‘s tax cuts and blaming Democrats for spiking inflation.
As members of Congress return to their home districts for the August recess, the Democratic and Republican parties are launching ad blitzes centred around the tax-cut and spending bill Trump signed into law on July 4, in an unofficial start to the 2026 midterm election campaign.
Democrats are focusing their message around access to healthcare while Republicans are countering that the tax provisions will put more money in voters’ pockets.
The bill makes permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and funds his immigration enforcement crackdown, while reducing healthcare and food aid.
It devotes US$170 billion to immigration enforcement while cutting US$1.1 trillion from Medicaid and other public health programmes and US$186 billion in food assistance.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million people would lose their health insurance by 2034 as a result of the bill, and that the tax provisions and increased immigration and military spending would increase the federal deficit by US$3.4 trillion over the next decade.
Republican strategists say they have plenty of time to sell the bill’s benefits.
“We will use every tool to show voters that the provisions in this bill are widely popular,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the NRCC.
And the party has a cash advantage. The Republican National Committee (RNC) had US$81 million in cash at the end of June, compared with the DNC’s US$15 million during the same period.
The RNC also enjoys a huge asset in a sitting president who is still holding fundraisers for big-ticket donors.
Republicans can only afford a net loss of two of the 220 seats they hold in the House to maintain control. In the Senate, they have a 53-47 advantage.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted last month, some 64 per cent of registered voters oppose cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in return for lower taxes for everyone.
Democrats are seizing on that sentiment, pushing the idea that Republicans have taken away healthcare to pay for tax giveaways for billionaires.
“Republicans threw working families under the bus to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, and we’ll never let them — or voters — forget that,” said DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman in a statement. “This will define the midterms.”
Republicans say the bill’s provisions on tips, overtime and Social Security show the party is focused on issues affecting working families.
They also point to a US$50 billion fund the bill establishes to help rural hospitals.
Another Republican strategy memo prepared by Trump’s pollsters, urges candidates to “lead on kitchen-table issues.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to tie Medicaid cuts to reduced healthcare access and higher costs.
The DNC’s Trumptax.com website claims that the bill will “cost the poorest 10 per cent of households US$1,600 a year while raising the income of the richest 10 per cent of Americans by US$12,000 a year”.
Unrig Our Economy, a left-leaning group, is running ads in Iowa, Arizona and Pennsylvania depicting voters voicing frustration at their Republican lawmakers for voting for Trump’s bill.
“I’m so angry that Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks just voted for the largest cut to Medicaid in history to give tax breaks to billionaires,” said one ad in Iowa, featuring a Davenport resident identified as Maria.
Protect Our Care, a left-leaning healthcare advocacy organisation, said it planned to spend up to US$10 million on ads in the first half of next year, largely focused on urging Republican lawmakers to restore funding to Medicaid.
Climate Power and the League of Conservation Voters spent US$500,000 on an ad pressuring lawmakers in six congressional districts to vote against the bill, claiming that it would increase electricity rates, according to its president, Pete Maysmith.
“The bill just happened, so let’s start communicating with people when it’s fresh and happening,” said Maysmith. “We don’t want to show up later and try to pick up that conversation.”
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
