Democrats on Capitol Hill are strongly condemning Republicans’ reported interest in making cuts to federal safety net programs in the next Congress, especially ones that low-income families are most reliant on.
“It would be devastating to all the people who rely on these programs — many of them are Trump voters,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told TPM on her way to a Wednesday floor vote. “There’s even a move to eliminate SNAP completely — which I will oppose — and it’s bad for the children who rely on SNAP but it’s also bad for our farmers. Our (agriculture) sector will suffer significantly if they were to eliminate programs or significantly cut programs like SNAP.”
The warnings from Duckworth and others come on the heels of recent reporting that revealed Republicans have been in discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal safety net programs to offset the cost of extending President-elect Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which is set to expire in late 2025.
Those significant changes could include adding new work requirements and spending caps for the programs that provide support for at least 70 million low-income Americans, per the Washington Post.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told TPM that ensuring that America’s most wealthy get tax cuts is on top of the GOP’s to-do list.
“What the people of this country need to understand is what kind of impact that’s going to have on programs that actually support them like Medicare, Medicaid, possibly Social Security, food stamps … all of that is going to be impacted,” Hirono said. “The way I look at it is the Republicans are going to steal their tax dollars to line the pockets of their friends.”
Republicans, of course, are known for their longtime interest in shrinking the federal social safety net. Over the years, they have attempted to make cuts to these programs disguised as supposedly common sense reforms.
Recent remarks from House Republicans themselves have made it clear that Republicans may use their trifecta to enact some of these supposed “reforms” they’ve been pushing for years. On the campaign trail this fall, Trump promised he would “not cut 1 cent from Social Security or Medicare,” but conveniently sidestepped questions about Medicaid. When he announced he’d appointed Mehmet Oz as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in his new administration, he praised Oz and promised the TV talk show doctor would “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency.”
Beyond that, at least two House Republicans acknowledged in interviews this week that the programs may be in the cross hairs.
“Nothing is sacrosanct. Nothing,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said on Thursday when asked about the new Department of Government Efficiency’s plans — which Trump has asked billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to run. “They’re gonna put everything on the table.”
And on Tuesday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo that they will have to make “some hard decisions.”
“We got to bring the Democrats in to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare. There’s hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved, and we know how to do it, we just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on,” he added.
Both Duckworth and Hirono told TPM that such a move by Republicans would likely spark backlash, not just from Democrats but from Republicans’ own voting base.
“I hope that there’s a cause and effect between screwing the voters and lining the pockets of their rich friends,” Hirono told TPM as she walked through the Senate basement.
Across the Capitol building, House Democratic leadership echoed Hirono and Duckworth’s sentiment.
“One of the major things that will happen next year is a tax bill. If Republicans are going to do big giveaways to billionaires, then no, Democrats are not going to support that,” Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (D-CA) said on Wednesday in response to a question about whether House Democrats will work with their colleagues across the aisle. “But (if) they want to pass tax reform that’s going to help working class families then Democrats will absolutely work with Republicans to get that done.”
House Republicans will keep their control of the lower chamber in the upcoming Congress but with an even narrower margin than they did the last two years. Democrats expect that will give them a bit more bargaining power in the face of Trump’s aggressive congressional agenda.
Meanwhile, MAGA loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) appears to be out of the loop about Trump and her colleagues’ interest in slashing entitlement programs.
When asked about the reported plans by TPM this week, Greene claimed she has not heard about any plans to cut federal safety net programs like food stamps.
“I personally am against that but I haven’t heard that,” she said Wednesday morning.
“The American people are still suffering from high inflation, bad economy, nothing really changed. It’s gonna take time to turn that around. It just always does,” she added. “ So I think any kind of cuts like that could hurt the poorest people in the population. So I think we have to be smart about how we do it.”
