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Pete Buttigieg
"It is up to us, the American people, to respond politically and say that it is unacceptable to harm the majority of Americans to make the very wealthiest a little better off,” Buttigieg said in an Instagram video.
Pete Buttigieg is speaking out against the so-called "big, beautiful" federal budget bill, passed by the House of Representatives Thursday and headed to Donald Trump’s desk.
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The bill will extend the tax cuts from Trump’s first term and slash about $1 trillion from Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income people and those will disabilities. It also includes cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps low-income Americans buy food, as well as to the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Planned Parenthood. It will take health care coverage or subsidies away from an estimated 17 million people over the next decade, while adding $4 trillion to the national debt during that period.
Buttigieg, the former Transportation secretary and a possible presidential contender in 2028, is denouncing the bill and calling on Americans to fight back.
Related: Gender-affirming care funding ban out of budget bill, but it still will devastate LGBTQ+ people
“We’re hearing that the House has passed the megabill after it got through the Republican Senate,” Buttigieg said in an Instagram video. “Now it’s on its way to President Trump’s desk, and he’s going to sign it. When he does, he will create some of the biggest tax breaks for billionaires in history, even more wealth to the wealthiest Americans. And the way they’re paying for it is to cut health care for working-class Americans, to cut food that would go to veterans and children in this country. To shut down rural hospitals and make an entire generation worse off. And they’re managing to increase the national debt and deficit while they do it. This is the decisive, once and for all answer to what the president and his party are about.
“You know, it was fashionable for Washington commentators for a while to say that this was a new, different, populist, working-class Republican Party. Now it has been demonstrated decisively that that was all bullshit. That they’re still all about making the wealthy even wealthier at the expense of working Americans.
Related: Why LGBTQ+ advocates hope Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' costs the Republicans in the midterms
“If there’s any good news in all of this, it’s that this is still a democracy. Even now, even with all of the damage that Donald Trump has done to our republic, there is no king in this country, which means we the people will have the last word. And it is up to us, the American people, to respond politically and say that it is unacceptable to harm the majority of Americans to make the very wealthiest a little better off.”
