Obamacare Repeal and Trump’s Record: Jim Pfaff on The Voice of Reason | Sep 10, 2026
Published: September 10, 2026
Network: The Voice of Reason Radio
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff
Republicans arrived in Dallas with two records to run on, and Jim Pfaff spent day two of the RNC midterm convention explaining why only one of them sells. On the September 10 edition of The Voice of Reason with Andy Hooser, the Conservative Caucus president was broadcasting from the Caucus suite at the convention — a big suite, he said, where the organization had been doing a lot of media interviews and meeting people around the floor. The message of what Donald Trump has been able to do, he said, is really strong; the message of what Republicans in Congress have done is kind of mixed. Between those two judgments sits the whole November argument, and Pfaff walked Hooser through it: the tax cuts in the one big beautiful bill, the Save America Act stuck under John Thune, John Fetterman’s shock appearance on the jumbotron the night before, the $5,000 dividend Trump floated in his speech, and the reason Pfaff will take the $500 rebate check but still wants a full Obamacare repeal.
Topics Covered
- Two Records, One Message: Trump Works, Congress Is Mixed
- The Fetterman Moment on Day One in Dallas
- The Chaos Machine and the Civil War That Isn’t Coming
- From the RNC Midterm Convention: Energy or Another Sugar High
- Full Obamacare Repeal, Not a Check on the Credit Card
- Key Takeaways
Two Records, One Message: Trump Works, Congress Is Mixed
Hooser opened on the promises made, promises kept theme that ran through the first day of speeches, and said it encouraged him at a time when Republican voters seem relatively complacent. Pfaff agreed on half of it. The administration’s side of the ledger is specific and it is finished business: the one big beautiful bill cut taxes for people who work overtime and people who get tips, and Social Security recipients no longer pay taxes on that income. In dollar terms coming into the coffers of Washington, Pfaff said, that is really not that much money. Measured by the people affected, it is huge — millions of them.
The business side is the part Pfaff expects to compound. Companies can now write off their capital expenditures when they expand or make the business more efficient, and he said that is already reaping a lot of dividends in terms of jobs, with some of the recent jobs report attributable to it. Then he turned the page to Congress, where the story stops being finished business.
“Where it’s kind of mixed is that the Save America Act is going nowhere because John Thune doesn’t want it to go anywhere.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
That is a leadership problem, not a vote-counting problem, and Pfaff named the leader. He put spending in the same category: we are just spending like drunken sailors. Neither item is something a congressional candidate can hand a voter as an accomplishment, which is exactly why he thinks the campaign has to be built on the other record.
“And in that milieu, the Trump administration message works and the congressional message doesn’t work as well.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff’s conclusion follows directly: if congressional candidates are willing to take that message and talk to the constituents they want votes from, they could win. There is a short time between the convention and November for them to get it done, and he called this a good first start. Hooser added the House caveat — a hat tip to Speaker Mike Johnson for moving a lot of bills out of a chamber with a slim majority, with the Senate as the problem — which is the same split Pfaff had just described from the outside.
The Fetterman Moment on Day One in Dallas
Hooser had gone to bed the night before to the headline that Democrat Senator John Fetterman had endorsed Dave McCormick in the Pennsylvania Senate race, and he asked whether it landed as shock and awe inside the hall. Pfaff said it was shock and awe to everyone, and that as far as he could tell nobody in the audience expected it. Fetterman appeared first on the jumbotron above the stage. People looked up, a gasp went through the crowd, the gasp kept going as he started talking, and then the cheering got really big.
“It was actually a pretty breathtaking moment. I’ve never seen anything quite like that in a convention.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff has been to a few conventions, and this is the first ever RNC midterm convention, which is part of why the room had no template for what it was watching. He was careful about what the moment was and was not. Fetterman is not conservative enough for Republican taste — Pfaff said that if Fetterman were trying to run as a Republican there would still be pushback on him getting that nomination. That is what makes the endorsement count for something: Democrats are going to try to destroy him, so it has to be called a mark of courage. Pfaff read it as heartfelt, and as a serious jab at Democrats and their radical tendencies, in part because Fetterman did not stop at criticism. He talked about protecting the steel industry in Pennsylvania, which is a positive agenda, not just a distinction between Democrats. TCC covered the convention’s opening in our reporting from the RNC midterm convention in Dallas.
What Pfaff Said the Endorsement Signals
Fetterman is, in Pfaff’s description, a standard Democrat liberal who winces at the direction of his party — and the only prominent one pushing back. A few others have done it, in a mild way. Pfaff’s read on the Democratic Socialists of America is that it is really a communist movement, and honestly not all that different from what Democrat policy has been over the last two decades. When Barack Obama said he was going to fundamentally transform America, Pfaff said, that is the direction he was speaking toward, and the party has been pushing that agenda ever since he came on the scene.
The Chaos Machine and the Civil War That Isn’t Coming
Hooser asked whether Fetterman was the first shot in a DNC civil war against the Democrat socialists taking over the party. Pfaff said some of that may be coming and then took the air out of it. By his observation there are not enough people who would be interested in doing such a thing, even if they could work up the courage, to make a difference — because the vast majority of Democrats are Democrat socialists like the ones on the ballot. They are just people willing to say out loud what Democrats have actually been for many years.
His evidence is the New York mayoral race. When Andrew Cuomo ran against Zohran Mamdani, Pfaff asked publicly what the real difference between them was, and answered that it is not huge. Cuomo would not talk about socializing grocery stores — but if that was something he needed to do, he would do it. Hooser extended the point: Cuomo would do whatever it took to get elected, then push it out on a ten- or fifteen-year plan that sounds nice and never happens. That was the old politician’s move. Voters now hold candidates to what they say, which Hooser called a good thing on both sides of the aisle and dangerous only for the people who have gone genuinely radical.
“All the Democrats do is build chaos. They are a chaos machine.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Pfaff attached a concrete forecast to that. If Democrats take the House they will do investigations, drag the administration in for hearings they feel compelled to hold, and turn it into a media circus. He compared it to the Russia hoax that hampered the first Trump administration and said to multiply that damage several times over. It is why he says Donald Trump really is running for president again: his presidency will be so hampered if Democrats get even the House, much less both chambers.
From the RNC Midterm Convention: Energy or Another Sugar High
The turnout question was on the table because the primaries were thin. Hooser noted really low voter turnout for primaries across the nation alongside a run of big wins by Trump-endorsed candidates, incumbents and non-incumbents alike, and asked what the convention does for the last fifty-plus days before November. Pfaff said it helps the energy and is a sort of boost in energy — and then named the failure mode.
The way for the RNC midterm convention not to end up as just another sugar high, he said, is for Republican candidates to talk about the message brought forth in Dallas: what Donald Trump has accomplished. The commitment has to be made to voters in their own districts and in their own words, not by parroting Donald Trump. And it has to include the unfinished list — the things Trump has not yet been able to accomplish because Republican leadership and Democrats in Congress have held them back. That is the same argument TCC made about Trump taking the healthcare fight to Pennsylvania: the record only moves votes when candidates carry it themselves.
Hooser closed the segment on the convention’s other day-one moment, UFC fighter Justin Gaethje speaking from the stage. Hooser knew he was a Trump supporter; what struck him was that Gaethje went and said it publicly.
Full Obamacare Repeal, Not a Check on the Credit Card
Trump’s speech ran about an hour and a half and included a $5,000 dividend for every American if Republicans hold the House and the Senate. Hooser asked what the room made of it. Pfaff answered as a policy wonk and from a libertarian perspective, and he separated his objection from the promise itself: “Now, by the way, I want my money back.” The reason he is against it is arithmetic. The $5,000 is not going to come from a surplus in the federal budget, because, as he put it, we are running $2 trillion in debt. Implementing it would add to the debt directly and indirectly.
“It’s just handing them money and then putting it on the credit card for it to be paid for later.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
What Pfaff called substantive and helpful is the opposite transaction: get rid of the Department of Education, get rid of the EPA, get rid of almost all and maybe all agriculture programs, and get rid of the corporate welfare benefits corporations still collect from the federal government. Cut those and you reduce the need for revenue in the future. In his framing, a rebate is giving him a fish; cutting the agencies is teaching him to fish, because then he can take his money and use it forever rather than having the government take it and misuse it. Outside the dividend, he said the convention message was very positive.
Then came the day’s other healthcare news — $500 reimbursement checks coming back from Obamacare — and Hooser asked whether it was a move toward capping the program’s influence on the industry. Pfaff took the check and kept the bigger demand.
“Listen, we have to go back to full repeal of Obamacare.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
He assigned the blame for why full Obamacare repeal never happened. John McCain killed it, and Paul Ryan killed it too by watering down the bill coming out of the House, because Paul Ryan believes in big government, as Pfaff said Republicans like him do, and Ryan thought it was a travesty to get rid of the program. Pfaff’s case against Obamacare is cost and delivery together: it may be the biggest problem in healthcare right now, and patients have no real options at the small or the major level because so much is dictated not only by Obamacare itself but by the fact that all pricing is tied to the Medicare structure. That tie is what limits the options.
What Pfaff Wants Instead of the Rebate
Privately determined plans of payment and plans of coverage, so people get closer to the type of healthcare they actually want. Price transparency, which Pfaff said has moved a little but not nearly enough. And an end to shopping through a government website that offers only the options the government has determined are acceptable — people need to go out and get their own. He called it massive work, and one of the next big political moves conservatives need to undertake.
Hooser tied it back to the ballot: that work needs a Republican majority, which is why both the election and the convention matter. Pfaff’s answer all segment had been the same mechanism in different applications — the accomplishments are real, the unfinished business is real, and neither one counts unless candidates say so out loud between Dallas and November.
Key Takeaways
- The Trump record sells, the congressional record does not – Pfaff said the message of what Donald Trump has done is really strong and what Republicans in Congress have done is mixed. Candidates who carry the administration’s record to their own constituents, in their own words, can win in November.
- The one big beautiful bill is the specific proof – No taxes on tips or overtime, no taxes on Social Security income, and full write-offs for business capital expenditures. Small money to Washington, huge to the millions affected, and already showing up in the jobs report.
- The Save America Act is stalled under John Thune – Pfaff named the Senate majority leader directly, and put runaway spending in the same column: Washington is spending like drunken sailors.
- Fetterman’s endorsement was a mark of courage – The Pennsylvania Democrat backed Dave McCormick on the jumbotron on day one. Pfaff called it breathtaking, unlike anything he has seen at a convention, and a serious jab at the Democrat Party’s radical tendencies — while noting Democrats will try to destroy him for it.
- No dividend on the credit card – Pfaff wants his money back, but not as a $5,000 check drawn against $2 trillion in debt. Cut the Department of Education, the EPA, agriculture programs and corporate welfare, and reduce the need for revenue permanently.
- Full Obamacare repeal is the next big fight – John McCain killed repeal and Paul Ryan watered it down. Pfaff wants price transparency, privately determined coverage, and healthcare pricing untied from the Medicare structure — a $500 rebate check does not substitute for it.
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The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.
Originally broadcast Sep 10, 2026 on The Voice of Reason with Andy Hooser, live from the RNC midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.
Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.