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When Pete Stauber first ran for Congress in 2018, he promised he would be an independent voice for his district and for Minnesotans. He told the News Tribune’s Editorial Board he would stand up against President Donald Trump and the Republican agenda when they wouldn’t help Minnesotans.
Unfortunately, Rep. Stauber has not kept that promise while Republicans in Washington, D.C., push ahead with a Project 2025-aligned agenda that threatens to devastate working-class Minnesotans.
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One of their most harmful ideas is a budget plan that would push millions of Americans off Medicaid, including thousands of middle-class and low-income Minnesotans. Stauber should know the damage this could do to working families, because Minnesota is a leading example of how effective Medicaid expansion has been under the Affordable Care Act. In 2013, the year before our state expanded Medicaid, approximately one in 12 Minnesotans lacked health insurance. Today, that number has dropped to less than 4% , which is an all-time low for our state. In fact, only three states in the country enjoy a lower uninsurance rate than Minnesota does today.
One would hope that, as a Minnesota representative in Congress, Stauber would celebrate this achievement. A less-partisan representative might be using his platform to talk about how other states can learn from Minnesota’s success to help more working-class families access affordable health insurance. But Stauber seems more interested in currying favor with Trump and Republican leadership than protecting vulnerable Minnesotans’ access to health care.
Families on Medicaid aren’t the only Minnesotans who stand to be impacted by the budget plan. Rural hospitals, and the Minnesotans who rely on them for their health care, also could be imperiled. When patients who don’t have health insurance need expensive emergency medical care from a hospital, the hospital has to absorb the cost. Many rural hospitals are already in a precarious financial position because they have a much smaller pool of patients than hospitals located in the Twin Cities. If thousands of Minnesotans are kicked off Medicaid, rural hospitals that were already struggling will be hit hard by an increase in uncompensated care.
That’s why some of the most enthusiastic champions for Medicaid expansion were DFL leaders from the Northland. Getting health insurance to those who need it is a win-win that helps working families while keeping local hospitals solvent.
If Rep. Stauber continues to go along with the Republican proposals that could kick thousands of Minnesotans off Medicaid, newly uninsured Minnesotans won’t be the only ones who suffer. Entire communities in some parts of our state only have access to one hospital within a reasonable driving distance. The added strain on rural hospitals’ finances could force them to make hard decisions about whether to close, putting communities at risk of losing access to essential, life-saving health care services.
The Republican majority in the U.S. House is extremely narrow. Without Rep. Stauber’s vote, it’s unlikely this plan will pass. If he was willing to draw a red line and tell his colleagues that Medicaid cuts are off the table, it would allow working-class Minnesotans to breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, people across our state wonder whether they could lose their health insurance, their community hospital, or their access to life-saving health care.
The good news is it’s not too late for Stauber to keep the promise he made when he won his seat in 2018. From what we have seen, I am not optimistic he will reconsider and put Minnesotans’ health care ahead of the partisan interests of Trump and the Republican Party. I challenge him to prove me wrong.
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Heidi Kraus Kaplan is executive director of the St. Paul-headquartered Minnesota DFL. She wrote this exclusively for the News Tribune.
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