May 09, 2025 01:44 PM UTC

Gabe Evans, National Poster Child For Vulnerable Republicans

• 5 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Freshman GOP Congressman Gabe Evans of Colorado’s ultra-competitive 8th Congressional District is the center of attention in Colorado politics right now for a very good reason: after winning what he thought was a plum appointment to the prestigious House Energy and Commerce Committee right after taking office, Evans is now one of a select few members of Congress tasked with coming up with some $880 billion-with-a-b in cuts that experts and the Congressional Budget Office say will have to come from Medicaid funds that over 125,000 people in Evans’ district rely on for their health coverage. When confronted with increasingly nervous colleagues like fellow Colorado freshman Rep. Jeff Hurd who warn they’ll reject a final bill that cuts Medicaid too far, Evans arrogantly responded that Hurd and other Republicans getting cold feet don’t know what they’re talking about, and only the smartest guys in the room on his committee have the straight dope.

But as the New York Times’ Annie Karni reported yesterday, the looming disconnect between Evans’ vague assurances and the hard numbers needed to achieve the GOP’s reconciliation budget goal is widening and threatening to swallow America’s most vulnerable freshman Republican whole:

Representative Gabe Evans, Republican of Colorado, secured his ticket to Washington in November when he defeated a Democratic member of Congress by less than 1 percentage point — just 2,449 votes.

Now Mr. Evans, 39, is helping to write legislation that could cement his own ticket back home. [Pols emphasis]

The first-term congressman, whose swing district just north of Denver includes 151,749 Medicaid recipients, sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican budget resolution that lays the groundwork for sweeping legislation to enact President Trump’s domestic agenda instructs the panel, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to slash spending by $880 billion over the next decade to help pay for a large tax cut. That number is impossible to reach without substantially reducing the cost of Medicaid, the government program that provides health insurance for lower-income Americans.

It’s the simple point we have driven home in this space for weeks, which is that every credible analysis of the E&C Committee’s task of cutting $880 billion from programs under its control says major cuts to Medicaid will be only way to do it. Evans has consistently proven unable to bridge this gap with specifics about the alternatives he insists exist to cutting Medicaid, instead relying on anecdotal complaints about Medicaid spending in states like Colorado:

Mr. Evans, for his part, has been trying to thread the needle by criticizing the way his state administers Medicaid, charging that it has paid millions of dollars to deceased people and undocumented immigrants.

“The overall goal is to be able to protect the program by cutting out the fraud, waste and abuse,” he told a Colorado public radio station last month. He declined to comment for this article.

Once again, Evans is attempting to justify cutting billions-with-a-b by citing anecdotes that total up to millions-with-an-m. There is no “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the system that totals up to the $880 billion Evans is tasked with cutting, and the process of “tightening” requirements for Medicaid coverage is intended as much to remove eligible patients who fail for whatever reason to jump through new hoops as it is to weed out any legitimate waste. That’s why more Republicans not named Gabe Evans are now backing away from deep cuts to Medicaid:

House Republican lawmakers exiting a meeting late Tuesday evening indicated that Johnson and the GOP leadership were walking away from some of the most debated Medicaid changes to the federal matching fund rates provided to the states.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., said those Medicaid changes “are dead.”

The problem with that  is the hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus on the verge of rebelling in the opposite direction:

But the more conservative Republicans, including members of the House Freedom Caucus, are insisting on steeper cuts as they fight to prevent skyrocketing deficits from the tax breaks.

It’s a classic case of the dog catching the car: now that Republicans have the power to carry out the sweeping cuts to federal institutions they have championed for years, the damage those cuts will do to Republicans politically in the fast-approaching midterm elections are giving the ones with an instinct for self-preservation pause. At the same time, the far-right MAGA types in safe Republican seats like the Q-some Twosome Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are demanding that the full slate of cuts move forward, and will be just as willing to torpedo Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” as moderates threatening to do the same from the other side.

For all the nominal power Gabe Evans wields today as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Evans is not in control of his own destiny, either with respect to this legislation or his political future. It’s very possible that the accelerating swing in public opinion against Trump and the MAGA brand has already swung enough to seal Evans’ doom as a one-term congressman. If the “big beautiful bill” Evans is helping craft crashes and burns under fire from both sides, Evans doesn’t have the political capital of his own to escape the damage. By lashing himself to the MAGA brand in a district that more than any other in Colorado calls for independence, Gabe Evans has already made his fateful choice.

At this point, Evans may be the only one who doesn’t realize it.