The Senate Bill cuts off the Medicaid expansion for states more gradually than the House bill, but would
enact deeper long - term cuts to the health care program for low - income Americans.
The economic crisis, previously viewed as an indispensable ally in helping the President
enact the agenda, now appears as a malevolent agent, and a perversely ill - timed one at that, since, as Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker explained, «the
longest and
deepest mass suffering» of the Great Recession, in contrast to the Great Depression, «has occurred with Obama in the White House.»