The Bangor Daily News on how Americans are rightly concerned about Republicans’ ‘big beautiful bill’:

We understand that it is hard to defend the “big beautiful bill” that was passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would take Medicaid benefits from millions of Americans, slash food aid and make higher education more expensive while extending trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It would also open the door to more oil and gas drilling while ending many clean energy tax breaks, make it harder to hold the federal government accountable, and it may even end your credit card perks. All while adding $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit.

Two hundred and fifteen Republican House members voted for the spending and tax cut measure, which President Donald Trump dubbed a “big beautiful bill,” strongly advocating for its passage. All 212 Democrats voted against the measure, along with two Republicans.

When some aspects of the bill, such as a 10-year freeze on state AI laws and a provision making it more difficult to hold federal officials in contempt for violating court orders, have been pointed out to Republican House members who voted for the bill, some now claim they didn’t know about these and other provisions. If they had, they claim, they would have voted against the bill.

Many Americans are rightly afraid of the consequences of the bill should it become law as it currently stands. It should not, of course.

Some of those fears were shared with Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who bravely held a town hall meeting in Parkersburg, Iowa. Not bravely, the meeting was held at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday. More than 100 people still showed up.

When Ernst was explaining (mostly erroneously) that the people who would no longer receive Medicaid benefits if the big beautiful bill became law were ineligible, a woman shouted: “People are going to die.”

Ernst started to repeat her claims about Medicaid, but then said: “Well, we are all going to die.”

While true, those words betrayed a stunning lack of empathy for the concerns of her constituents. The woman who shouted was most likely not concerned about people eventually dying of old age, she was more likely worried about people without health insurance dying unnecessarily.

Not content with her snide answers, Ernst inexplicably doubled down with a video “apology” over the weekend. In the video, which it appears Ernst filmed herself, the senator is walking through a cemetery. She wants to sincerely apologize, she says, for her remarks at the town hall. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth. So I apologize,” Ernst said in the video posted to her Instagram account.“And, I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well,” she added. “But for those who would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I would encourage you to embrace my lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

With all due respect to Ernst and her religious beliefs, embracing Jesus is not a logical option to providing health care to those who need it.

The bill is now in the hands of the U.S. Senate. It should not simply be tweaked. It should be rejected.