Pingree: Some Republicans are banking on Democrats taking power and reversing GOP cuts

A Democratic Maine congresswoman said over the weekend that behind closed doors Republicans are acknowledging frustrations with health cuts implemented by their own party and banking on Democrats to reverse them.

“I’ve had Republicans say to me, ‘I’m not that worried about the Medicaid cuts because you guys are going to take over and you’re going to fix it,'” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat representing southeast Maine, told a group of health reporters in Massachusetts on Saturday.

Pingree wouldn’t say which Republicans.

“People always say to me, ‘Well, which Republican?’” she added. “‘Why don’t they say that in public?’ They don’t, OK. It just doesn’t work that way. Nobody’s sticking up right now.” 

In 2025, Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sprawling piece of legislation that made deep cuts across a host of federal programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Only two Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives — Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Brian Fitzpatrick, of Pennsylvania — joined their Democratic colleagues to vote against the bill. The cuts were meant to create cost savings in order to renew a series of tax cuts, but the new law still increases the federal deficit. The Trump administration has also made cuts to federal  biomedical research funding and other programs independent of Congress.

Pingree said Republicans are also quietly concerned about corruption in the Trump administration.

“I’ve had others say, ‘When you take over, you need to investigate the s— out of what’s going on with the corruption in this government and all the things that have been dismantled,” she said. “We need it back.”

Pingree has served in Congress since 2009. She’s the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies and is up for reelection in November.

“They (Republicans) know we’re non-functional,” she said. “And they know they’re going to lose the midterms.”