Medicaid Work Requirements and NLRB Rescissions: Eroding FDR's Economic Security Vision

Project 2025's execution is a rolling realignment of how economic power is distributed in the United States. On one front, the 2025 reconciliation law codified a federal Medicaid work requirement—a policy that CBPP’s June 3, 2026 analysis describes as featuring “major, last-minute policy shifts” that, in Louisiana alone, will strip coverage from an estimated 47,000 adults (state DHH data, unpublished). The law is already in motion: Louisiana’s Department of Health announced via Facebook that starting January 1, 2027, members aged 19–64 must meet work requirements or risk losing coverage. On a separate, already-finalized front, on February 14, 2025, acting NLRB General Counsel William Cowen rescinded GC 24-01, the Cemex election standard—a change that CBPP notes has already weakened workers’ ability to unionize without retaliation, though no count of affected cases has been released. The Roosevelt Institute framework reminds us that our economy is at a hinge point where concentrated financial interests extract public subsidy and privilege while stripping protections from ordinary workers. Darrick Hamilton’s testimony underscores that “choice is an illusion if individuals lack basic resources”—and these policies remove resources from vulnerable communities, whether through cutting health coverage or undermining collective bargaining. FDR’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights called for security from want and the right to a job; these actions directly contravene that vision. To reverse this, we must advance progressive taxation, a full-employment Fed policy, and genuine small-business support. The fight is not about restoring a past status quo but about building the universal public goods FDR envisioned: universal health coverage, robust union protections, and economic security as a right, not a privilege.