Story highlights Pete Buttigieg: Senate pondering what to preserve and eliminate from health care bill

Message to Washington: Leave those wasteful tax cuts on the cutting room floor

Pete Buttigieg is the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his.

(CNN) When the House of Representatives recently passed a $1 trillion tax cut disguised as a health care bill, one Republican in Washington spoke up against what he saw as the real motivation behind the bill. "I think it's to set up tax reform," Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy said in remarks to the American Hospital Association, "and all the money used for coverage is instead going to be used to pay down the bill for tax reform."

Pete Buttigieg

Cassidy's resistance to using health care reform as a front to slash taxes for the wealthy is not a popular position in his own party. But he is absolutely right about the true intentions behind this proposal: Republicans are jamming through a massive tax giveaway under utterly false pretenses. With the process now moving behind closed doors in the Senate, and Washington increasingly consumed with investigating the troubling links between the President and Russia, it is critical that Democrats expose and defeat this cynical ploy.

Soon after his emotional monologue about his son's heart condition went viral, Jimmy Kimmel hosted Cassidy on his show to talk about the health care debate. Wouldn't it be easier, Kimmel asked, to achieve the goal of covering more people and making health care more affordable if Congress simply did away with trying to pass a tax cut for millionaires at the same time?

Cassidy agreed with Kimmel. "Tell the American people to call their senators," he urged.

We must take him up on that. As the Senate begins considering -- in secret, at the moment -- what to preserve and what to eliminate from the House bill, we should deliver a loud and clear message to Washington: leave those wasteful tax cuts on the cutting room floor.