Sarah Sanders has a new campaign ad, and she wants you to meet Brad.

Brad is a young man lying around eating cheese balls and playing video games. Then Sanders speaks to the viewer. "You actually work hard," she says. "You pay taxes to cover welfare for guys like Brad who just choose not to work."

The 30-second spot is airing statewide as part of a six-figure ad buy, the Arkansas Advocate reported. It is selling Arkansas's coming Medicaid work requirement: starting in January, adults covered under the state's Medicaid expansion will have to log 80 hours a month of work, volunteering, school or job training, or a combination, unless they qualify for an exemption.

Brad isn't on welfare. He's on health insurance.

Start with the word "welfare." The program in the ad is Medicaid, which is health insurance. It pays for doctor visits, prescriptions and hospital stays.

Calling it "welfare" and casting it as a check for a guy on a couch is the whole trick. The NAACP Arkansas State Conference said it was "deeply concerned" that the ad "unfairly stereotypes the poor as choosing not to work."

"Arkansas families deserve policies that address poverty — not advertisements that oversimplify it," the group said.

The requirement she's bragging about isn't really hers

The Arkansas Times fact-checked the ad and pointed out that Sanders says she "launched a welfare-to-work requirement." What is actually taking effect in January is a rule from Trump's 2025 budget bill, which requires states to impose work requirements on Medicaid expansion adults by January 1, 2027. The Advocate says the same: Arkansas's requirement "will take effect in January under the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

Sanders did ask the federal government for her own version. In January 2025, she submitted a waiver to bring work requirements back. But the law that now forces it on Arkansas, and every other expansion state, was passed by Congress. Sanders is spending six figures to take credit for it.

Arkansas already ran this experiment

Here is what Brad's ad leaves out. Arkansas has done this before, and it went badly.

During Trump's first term, Arkansas became the first state to put work requirements on its Medicaid expansion. More than 18,000 people lost coverage before a federal judge blocked the rule in 2019. Experts who studied it found a significant increase in uninsured adults "and no signs the requirement created workforce gains," the Advocate reported.

In other words, it didn't get people jobs. It got people kicked off their health insurance.

And it lands on top of everything else

Arkansas's Medicaid expansion is already in trouble. We reported in August that the Trump administration refused to renew ARHOME, the program covering more than 200,000 low-income Arkansans, for reasons that trace straight back to the budget bill Sanders spent a year celebrating.

So the governor's message to Arkansans worried about their health coverage is a commercial about a guy eating cheese balls.

When the ad drew criticism, Sanders brushed it off. "Some critics online don't like my welfare work requirement ad. Next thing you know they'll say I should have used cookies instead of cheese balls," she posted on X.

What it adds up to

Sarah Sanders is running a six-figure statewide ad that calls Medicaid "welfare" and casts its recipients as lazy, to take credit for a work requirement that is taking effect under Trump's 2025 budget bill. The last time Arkansas imposed one, more than 18,000 people lost their health coverage and experts found no job gains. The NAACP's Arkansas chapter says the ad unfairly stereotypes poor people as choosing not to work.

Source

Arkansas Times: "Fact-checking Sarah Sanders' claims about Brad, the welfare queen" and Arkansas Advocate