Thomas Breen file photo
DeLauro: "This bill will make peoples’ daily lives more expensive for years to come."
“Republicans just raised the cost of living for working Americans.”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro issued that warning and lament at the top of a press release sent out Thursday afternoon in response to Congressional Republicans’ passage of a Medicaid-slashing budget-reconciliation bill championed by President Donald Trump.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed that bill 218 to 214 Thursday afternoon, mostly along party lines. The domestic-policy bill, which the U.S. Senate has also already approved, now heads to the president to be signed into law.
According to this summary published by Connecticut Voices for Children, the newly approved bill includes $186 billion in cuts to food stamps over the next nine years; nearly $1 trillion in cuts during that same time period to Medicaid, a federal health insurance program for the poor, primarily by imposing work requirements; increased funding to the Department of Homeland Security to support the construction of a $45 billion border wall, as well as another $45 billion for ICE to build “family detention camps;” and the elimination and restriction of various federal student grants and loans for higher education.
That summary also states that the bill will increase the federal deficit by at least $3.3 trillion over the next decade, a number Republicans have contested. The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in perpetuity.
In her Thursday email press release, DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called out the bill for kicking families off Medicaid, raising energy costs, and cutting food stamps, all to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy.
“President Trump promised to lower the cost of living from day one. Instead, he and Republicans in Congress cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy while sticking working and middle-class families with the bill,” DeLauro said. “President Trump’s budget bill hands $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and the biggest corporations while gutting the very programs that help everyday Americans survive. This bill will make peoples’ daily lives more expensive for years to come.”
She noted that the bill could take Medicaid healthcare coverage away from nearly 17 million Americans, including 186,580 people in Connecticut who rely on HUSKY or Access Health CT. “It would trigger a further $500 billion cut to Medicare. It guts clean energy investments, raising electricity bills across the country. And it cuts $200 billion from proven food assistance programs like SNAP while grocery bills keep rising, taking food away from 42 million Americans.”
She concluded by stating that Republicans, who have championed this bill as focused on reducing the cost of living by extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in perpetuity, are instead fighting for the rich and powerful.
State officials and social-service and advocacy nonprofits from across Connecticut also sent out press releases Thursday condemning the newly approved legislation.
“Not only does this plan bankrupt the federal government, but it slashes critical safety net programs, particularly Medicaid and SNAP, that so many hard-working American families need for their health and survival,” Gov. Ned Lamont said. “Even worse, there isn’t a single state in the nation that will have the ability to backfill these massive cuts. Kicking people off their health insurance, defunding hospitals and nursing homes, and eliminating food and nutrition assistance is going to have a ripple effect throughout the country, causing workers to lose their jobs and premiums to go up. And to top it all off, this bill will saddle our children and grandchildren with trillions in additional debt.”
Connecticut Voices for Children Executive Director Emily Byrne sounded a similar note in still another Thursday press release. “The Republican majority of the U.S. Congress has passed a bill that will force residents to make impossible choices between paying for health care coverage, food and other household essentials,” she said. “While the lives of low- and middle-income families become harder and more expensive, the ultra-wealthy and well-connected will largely benefit from a multi-trillion dollar tax giveaway that they don’t need to survive. The ultimate cost of these historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will be human lives — the unnecessary death of Connecticut residents — unless state lawmakers choose another direction.”
Yale New Haven Hospital spokesperson Mark D’Antonio struck a similar note in a comment sent to the Independent after the House’s passage of the bill.
“Any cuts to Medicaid would be devastating to safety net hospitals like those affiliated with Yale New Haven Health,” he wrote. “Our patients need care. Loss of Medicaid coverage means patients will face new barriers to accessing the care they need, and hospitals like ours will struggle to meet rising demand with lower reimbursement. State leaders must act now to protect health care for all patients across the state and the hospitals and clinicians who provide that care.”
Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde noted the same. She said on Wednesday that roughly 22,000 of her federally qualified health center’s 37,000 patients are Medicaid recipients. “It is so disheartening to listen to discussions coming out of Washington DC which seem to be ignoring the very real human consequences of the cuts being considered,” she said on Wednesday. At Fair Haven Community Health Care, we are fully committed to continuing to see all patients who seek our care, regardless of whether or not they have insurance. Obviously there will be a limit to what we can do in the face of major reimbursement cuts, but we remain committed to continuing to see all patients and providing them with high quality care. We will never abandon patients.
Mona Mahadevan contributed to this report.