Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has offered some comforting words to the more than 17 million Americans expected to lose Medicaid under Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill: “They’ll get over it,” he said calmly, as if discussing a stubbed toe rather than access to lifesaving medical care.
It was a statement delivered with the stoicism of a man who’s never had to choose between insulin and rent – and it may go down as the defining shrug of the 2025 legislative season.
But it begs the question: what else does Senator McConnell think voters will “get over”? Judging by the broader policy trajectory, quite a bit.
Healthcare
With over a trillion dollars slashed from Medicaid and Medicare facing automatic cuts due to budget rules, the American healthcare system is now running on hope and expired hydroxychloroquine.
McConnell’s message? Breathe deep, ignore the chest pain, and soldier on. But most of all, don’t worry. He assures that, “You’ll get over it.” Walk it off. Maybe try essential oils. “Getting over it” may soon become an official medical diagnosis.
Tax Fairness
While the average family will receive temporary tax relief – set to expire in just a few years – the wealthiest Americans will enjoy permanent cuts, enhanced loopholes, and an estate tax break big enough to bury the middle class.
Still, McConnell believes you’ll adapt. Just try “working harder,” possibly until you’re 93. If that doesn’t work, consider becoming a multibillionaire. It’s very fashionable this season.
Education
Public schools are facing reduced federal support, with some states already cutting programs, teacher salaries, and even textbooks. A new experimental model, reportedly called “figure it out,” encourages students to learn by staring into the void and hoping for enlightenment.
McConnell’s take? The founding fathers didn’t have iPads, and they turned out fine (apart from the wigs and the powdered cheeks).
Retirement
Social Security remains untouched for now – but ballooning deficits and pressure from fiscal hawks have it squarely in the crosshairs.
If you’re hoping to retire before your knees give out, McConnell has a plan: don’t. “Retirement’s overrated anyway,” he noted from his marble desk. “The Founding Fathers didn’t retire. They just died at 38.”
Climate Change
While bushfires rage, sea levels rise, and temperatures in Nevada now rival the surface of Venus, climate funding remains stagnant. Trump’s bill prioritises defence spending and fossil fuel subsidies over sustainability.
“Nature,” McConnell said recently, “has always been unpredictable. Just stay indoors… Climate change is just nature expressing itself.” Don’t worry. Billionaires have backup planets.
Democracy
With ongoing efforts to restrict voting access, suppress turnout, and redraw districts with all the subtlety of a toddler with a crayon, the future of democratic participation remains uncertain.
But McConnell appears unconcerned. After all, democracy isn’t endangered – it’s just evolving. Probably into something a little less inconvenient.
Final Word
In an age of rising inequality, vanishing healthcare, and performative governance, Mitch McConnell’s message to the American people is clear: adapt, lower your expectations, and get over it.
“Sure, people are upset,” McConnell told reporters. “They lost their healthcare. Their rent’s gone up. Billionaires are getting tax rebates the size of small countries. But trust me – they’ll get over it. America always does.” Until it doesn’t.
Because if you can’t afford to live, the least you can do is take it like a patriot.
A Lesson for Australians?
Here in Australia, we pride ourselves on compulsory voting, public healthcare, and a relative lack of billionaires writing policy in cigar lounges. But democracy is only as strong as its public’s willingness to defend it.
When a world power normalises cruelty with a shrug, it’s not just an American story. It’s a global warning. Because when the most powerful democracy in the world tells its own citizens to “get over it,” the rest of us had better pay close attention.
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He has very clearly forgotten who elected him. No doubt more than a few of those who did will be wondering why they did.
Not sure how I managed to get into the photo alongside the geriatric thumbs-upper, but you can see from my expression I’m not that thrilled about it. I think somebody might have fed me an Oxycodone-laced carrot and then kidnapped me for the photo-op.
[edit: Thanks Roswell… a roo’s gotta look after his reputation 🙂 ]
Canguro, I’ll get rid of it. I’m not very good at creating images – as demonstrated. The roo was meant to have a shocked look. Epic fail.
O’Connell is just one of the USA right wing political sphinctres doing their best to avoid duty to the people. Full of doctrine, subservience to a ratheaded raving roving rubbishtip skulled scammy skunk in Trump, and to sheer greedy ignorant drives, the silly senility challenged O’Connell is an uncivilised swine, lower than a maggot’s morts dock. And so, democracy is wounded, the people betrayed.
The overwhelming majority of intelligent, compassionate people OUTSIDE of the capitalistic, neoliberal, profit-obsessed nation of America just KNEW that this would happen under the mismanagement of that callously inhumane political psychopath, Donald Trump! Trump will go on and on negatively impacting EVERYTHING that, in any way, assists in improving the health and welfare of ordinary working- and middle-class Americans which INCLUDES Medicaid and a terrifying number of government-subsidised programs listed in the link provided below!
This is an absolutely SHOCKING defundment and annihilation of much-needed socially-responsible programs – much of it done in stealth and secrecy – by a narcissistic, dangerously undemocratic multi-billionaire sociopath who will only use the funding saved by his treacherous government to promote himself and fund his vindictive, racist and misogynistic campaign to MAKE AMERICA HATE AGAIN!
Clearly, the huge majority of Murdoch-manipulated, misinformed, uneducated Trump-supporting fools who voted for Trump in haste will, now, undoubtedly REPENT AT LEISURE! When Trump-supporting short-sighted people chose to use Trump’s dodgy (and totally false) background as a “businessman” to help to get this megalomaniac over the line, they chose to forget that Trump is a SIX TIMES BANKRUPT who left nothing behind but a huge debt and a mountain of bills to his long list of disgruntled creditors that Trump had NO INTENTION of paying! It is clear that not only was Trump totally inept in managing an effective business (without doing dodgy deals), he is every bit as shamelessly self-serving, untrustworthy and incapable of managing America as, undoubtedly, the worst, most corrupt POTUS in American history!
Trump is not only a man who ticks every box as a ruthless, born-to-rule fascist and a notorious, recidivist misogynistic predator, he is a remorseless CONVICTED CRIMINAL who surrounds himself with like-minded callously inhumane elitists (like the reprobate O’Connell) who, like so many repugnant, self-absorbed psychopaths in the extreme right-wing regimes (like the UK Tories and the Trump-supporting LNP in Australia) are bad to the bone!
Click on the link below to learn of the enormous number of social, health and welfare programs that Trump has ALREADY defunded (to the tune of countless millions) and/or has already annihilated or continues to eradicate! This is a truly terrifying indication of just how depraved and truly devious the Trump regime really is! Trump has dangerously and deliberately defunded or removed vital programs in a HUGE variety of essential areas such as vital programs relating to rational economic reform, employment/job seeking initiatives; and, as expected from a rusted-on misogynist like Trump, the inevitable defundment/removal of a wide range of programs that assist and promote many women’s issues; programs that assist refugee/asylee assistance, legal/judicial programs, programs that promote the arts; programs that, in any way, promote truth and impartiality in the media; the cruel removal of essential funding required to aid international charitable assistance/development (by the wealthiest nation on the planet) and, worst of all, the total removal of funding that assists with the essential service as a political investigative Watchdog which will now allow Trump, a convicted criminal and undemocratic fascist (without one iota of humanity) to do ANYTHING he likes, even resorting to criminality and WAR, without consequence:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/46-programs-trump-wants-to-eliminate-according-to-his-proposed-budget
Is “They will get over it” amerkin for “Let them eat cake” ?
That all worked out so well for the frogside upperclasstawtocrassy way back when.
It’s a shame Bernie Sanders is a little beyond his Revolution era tricornered hat and waving his cutlass, but someone, somewhere is going to start feeding rich bastards to Mme Guillotine.
Hard to feel sorry for Americans as their country goes into a death spiral, they voted for it. Or at least the ones who could be bothered to vote.
If they don’t get over it, it may be because they died trying to.