House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Monday told CNBC that the Medicaid work requirements in the “Big Beautiful Bill” are “going to be significant reforms to get people back into the workforce” because too many recipients are “able-bodied and they can go get a job and they’re living in their mom’s basement playing video games.” Funny how the original plan, prior to Sunday night’s vote, was to have work requirements not kick in until 2029. Now supposedly it’s 2027, but still if this is such an urgent problem as framed with this poll-tested horseshit about lazy, basement-dwelling video gamers from Scalise, then you’d think that they’d make it happen right away, not at some point in the future when the political price of it would be more diffuse and/or the Dems’ problem.

Anyway, it’s beyond obvious the actual point is not to get Medicaid recipients to work but to force them through a fucking maze of paperwork and red tape to prove that they are unable to, which would force untold millions of actually disabled people – as in “the truly needy” – out of the system.

But that’ll take a while to sink in on top of two or four years, giving the GOP time to come up with some way to blame immigrants and minorities for the suffering they inflicted on their voters.

In related news here’s some of the other social safety net changes added to the “Big Beautiful Bill” on Monday. Per Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill, a previous version had actually banned legal immigrants from receiving SNAP food aid, but that’s apparently gone now. Hill adds that the changes now also show “even bigger carveouts for Cuban nationals as some FL members wanted,” because those are the kind of immigrants they like. Someone’s gotta make sure the Afrikaners are included too.