What a difference a month—and having to face your constituents in person—has made for Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who faced angry town hall crowds back home this week. Cotton was absolutely slammed at a Monday town hall, "on topics ranging from Donald Trump’s tax returns and possible ties to Russia to the GOP push to repeal Obamacare" Politico reports.
It was the latest in a string of confrontations between GOP lawmakers and voters during Congress’ two-week spring recess, coming on the heels of the party’s failed bid to overturn the Democratic health care law. Cotton, a rising star in the Republican Party seen as a potential White House aspirant in time, withstood 90 minutes of boos and occasional cheers from an oft-agitated crowd in Little Rock, Arkansas.
One exchange, however, liveblogged by the Arkansas Times made actual political news.
Cotton was asked whether he supported repealing the Affordable Care Act, which would take away health insurance from 300,000 Arkansans (that's the approximate number of citizens in the state covered by the Medicaid expansion). Cotton said that he still supported repealing the ACA. But he disagreed that repealing the ACA required taking health insurance away from those 300,000 Arkansans. In fact, he said he opposed the recent House repeal-and-replace bill in part because it would do just that (via eliminating the Medicaid expansion). Lot of spin in his answer, but the key takeaway: Cotton says he still wants to replace Obamacare but he seems to be committing, in practice, to protecting some version of the coverage expansion achieved in Arkansas via the private option (also known as Medicaid expansion). That's an important political story.
That's the same Cotton who just a month ago told Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union program that "Medicaid is a welfare program," designed for "the indigent, elderly, the disabled, the blind and children." He implied that anyone not in those categories was a moocher. "It’s not designed for able-bodied adults," he said. "We want to get those people off of Medicaid, into a job and into market-based insurance."
Maybe since then Cotton has discovered that the majority of Arkansans on the state's "private option" Medicaid expansion are actually working. In jobs. Having to talk to people in person probably has helped him figure that stuff out.
He's made his commitment now—he'll protect his state's Medicaid expansion. Good job, Arkansas. Keep him on it.