This week, the Trump Administration unveiled its official 2021 budget proposal and the contents are deeply troubling. With massive cuts to health care and other safety net services for millions of Americans, this budget is a roadmap of destructive and shortsighted attacks on essential services and critical lifelines that millions of Americans rely on for their health, financial security and well-being every single day. 

The Trump 2021 budget proposal calls for:

• Brutal Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security: President Trump is pushing to slash billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid and cut Social Security Disability Insurance, all while his Administration continues to back the fringe Texas v. U.S. lawsuit that would repeal every health care protection in the Affordable Care Act.
• Devastating Consequences for Clean Air & Safe Water: The President has proposed heavy cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the public agency responsible for keeping dangerous pollutants out of our air and water and protecting the public health of all Americans. His budget calls specifically for a 26.5 percent cut to the EPA from what Congress appropriated in December.
• Stripping Food Support from Hungry Families: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps millions of Americans in cities and rural communities put food on the table. President Trump is requesting $182 billion be cut from this life-saving program.
• Killing Investments in Education & Good-Paying Jobs: Instead of investing in opportunity, the President is pushing higher education further out of reach by cutting student loans by $179 billion and eliminating Public Service Loan Forgiveness, as well as slashing billions from the Education Department and weakening job training initiatives by decimating the U.S. Department of Labor.
• Abandoning America’s Infrastructure: Rather than investing in the infrastructure of the future, the President is slashing the Department of Transportation by 13 percent and inflicting massive cuts on the Army Corps of Engineers.
• Building a Costly, Ineffective Border Wall: At the same time he is proposing massive cuts to these fundamental programs, the President would allocate $2 billion on a wasteful border wall that can’t even hold up to wind, or rain, or ladders.

A budget is a statement of our values. I take no pleasure in saying that the values in this budget are bankrupt. Even worse, it continues a growing pattern of statements by this President that contradict promises and public statements he has been making to the American people for years.

President Trump claimed last week during the State of the Union that he would protect families’ health care and those with pre-existing conditions while, at the same time, fighting in federal court to destroy those very protections and dismantle every other protection and benefit of the Affordable Care Act.

Last weekend the President took to Twitter to repeat his campaign promise not to touch Social Security or Medicare. Days later, this budget reveals that the opposite is true. 

While the President continues to offer the American people broken promises, we are working in the House to keep our promises and pass meaningful legislation that works for the people. This includes H.R. 3, The Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which would grant Medicare the power to directly negotiate prices with drug companies and make these lower costs available to all insured Americans. We also recently unveiled a $760 billion infrastructure plan that would create an estimated 10 million new jobs and help provide communities around the country with the resources they need to undertake transformative projects that are made to last.

My colleagues and I have fought to make quality health care in America more affordable and accessible to all. We continue this fight to ensure that all Americans receive the treatment they need to stay well. For decades, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and SNAP have served as a critical safety net for countless families in our Capital Region and beyond to remain healthy. The huge cuts to these programs proposed in Trump’s budget would put the future of these families into question.

I promise to continue to fight against these cuts that would move our nation backwards and pledge to work to enact legislation that supports those most in need.