Yesterday, Derrick Van Orden melted down with lie after lie claiming to have personally delivered extra funding for Wisconsin’s hospitals – despite voting to cut Medicaid, rip that funding away from rural hospitals, and worsening the problem that Wisconsin had to solve in the first place.
Van Orden tweeted *nineteen times* claiming credit for extra Medicaid dollars in the state budget he had nothing to do with. Nevermind that these dollars were necessary because of his vote to slash Medicaid and, with it, reduce funding for Wisconsin’s hospitals.
DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Derrick Van Orden is lying because he cannot defend his vote to cut Medicaid, rip away funding for Wisconsin’s hospitals, kick Wisconsinites off their health care, and raise their costs. Wisconsinites see through the bullshit and will reject Van Orden next November.”
Read more:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Derrick Van Orden claims credit for Wisconsin’s extra Medicaid dollars after voting to cut the program
- U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s victory lap over the passage of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and spending bill is running into a roadblock.
- After voting for the federal measure that threatened to cause tens of thousands of Wisconsinites to lose Medicaid coverage, the battleground district Republican has attempted to take credit for securing additional Medicaid funding through the state budget.
- He’s said he “helped secure” $1 billion a year in Medicaid funding for Wisconsin and suggested Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the state budget in a late-night session “because I asked him personally.”
- Evers’s office, however, said Van Orden had nothing to do with that state’s scramble to secure Medicaid funding ahead of the enactment of the bill Van Orden supported that would slash federal Medicaid dollars.
- Van Orden ahead of the July 3 House vote on the legislation highlighted a letter he sent to Evers the day prior urging the governor to sign the state’s budget “without delay” because it included a provision that would expand Wisconsin’s Medicaid provider tax and allow the state to collect more federal Medicaid funds — something Trump’s bill sought to limit.
- The governor’s office, though, has noted Evers had already planned to sign the state budget before Van Orden’s involvement and ahead of the federal bill’s enactment and had been working for months on a provision to raise the state’s provider tax on hospitals.
- Trump’s big bill…freezes the provider tax in states like Wisconsin that have not expanded Medicaid, and it gradually lowers the provider tax rates in expansion states from 6% to 3.5%.
- State lawmakers and Evers raced to pass the state budget last week to avoid that freeze. The budget included a provision that expanded the state’s tax on hospitals from 1.8% to 6%.
- Cudaback, the governor’s spokesperson, claimed Van Orden did not reach out to Evers until June 30 — just days before the vote. And she said Evers “introduced a hospital assessment increase *in February.*”
HuffPost: GOP Rep. Weirdly Lies About Helping His State Survive The Medicaid Cuts He Voted For
- Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is peddling a bizarre claim that he was key to securing $1 billion to help hospitals in his state survive the sweeping Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax bill.
- Except that he wasn’t — and he voted for Trump’s bill.
- In more than a dozen social media posts in recent days, Van Orden tries to take credit for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) and state legislators rushing to pass a budget that increases the state’s so-called Medicaid provider tax rate. This is a state-imposed tax on health care providers, like hospitals, which the state uses to help pay for its Medicaid program. The federal government matches the state’s provider tax rate.
- Until recently, Wisconsin had a very low provider tax rate compared to other states. Because Trump’s tax bill would have frozen that tax rate at its low level, state legislators rushed to increase the rate in their budget so Wisconsin could be grandfathered into Trump’s tax law at the maximum level, meaning it will now get an extra $1 billion in federal money every year.
- Van Orden, whose House seat is rated a “toss-up” in the 2026 elections, seems to want people to believe he was vital to his state getting this $1 billion to offset the pain of the bill he voted for. In Wisconsin alone, Trump’s now-law is estimated to kick more than 258,000 people off of their health insurance and puts at least three rural hospitals at risk of closing.
