Sen. Cory Booker and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are holding a livestreamed sit-in on the Capitol steps in protest of a forthcoming Republican budget they say will gut Medicaid — a federal and state program that helps to cover medical costs for people with limited income as well as disabled children and adults.
The sit-in began at sunrise, shortly after 6 a.m., and Booker and Jeffries promised to stay for “a good number of hours.”
“We are here on a Sunday morning… to have a conversation grounded in our faith traditions — and not just ours but the nation’s as a whole — to talk about what we think is a moment of moral urgency that we are in this moment,” Booker said at the beginning of the event.
The sit-in is a protest of a Republican budget bill that will likely seek to cut spending on public health insurance programs to compensate for the cost of President Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy since the GOP plans to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Committees in Congress are expected to start working on the budget this week after a budget resolution was adopted by both houses. The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion over the next decade. The biggest targets for those cuts are Medicare and Medicaid.
Republicans plan to move the budget forward through budget reconciliation, which will let them pass it without any Democratic support. GOP leadership has said they hope to have Trump sign the bill by Memorial Day. Among their ideas to cut federal spending is a plan to add work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries, something Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has endorsed.
“It’s common sense,” Johnson said. “Little things like that make a big difference not only in the budgeting process but in the morale of the people. You know, work is good for you. You find dignity in work.”
One study by the Urban Institute found that adding work requirements could cut some 5 million people from the program. The vast majority of Medicaid recipients — 92 percent — are already either working, going to school, or caretaking for others, an analysis by health policy research firm KFF found.
Earlier this month, twelve House Republicans signed a letter to their leadership expressing their opposition to Medicaid cuts. They wrote that they “will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.”
“As we prepare to come back into session tomorrow, this is a time to choose,” Jeffries said. “We’re either going to choose the side of the American people, or we’re going to choose this cruel budget that Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of the American people.”
“That bill, we believe, presents one of the greatest moral threats to our country that we’ve seen in terms of what it will do to providing food for the hungry, care for the elderly, services for the disabled, healthcare for the sick, and more,” Booker said.
“Martin Luther King said budgets are moral documents, and that’s the spirit we come here this morning, hoping to have a larger conversation,” he added.
Booker and Jeffries invited everyday Americans to sit with them at the Capitol to share their stories. Over the five hours the live stream has been running, they have been joined by lawmakers — including Democratic Sens. Chris Coons and Angela Alsobrooks and Reps. Gil Cisneros and Gabe Amo — as well as Americans, including families who receive and rely on Medicaid benefits and tourists visiting the Capitol.
Other leaders spoke at the sit-in, including Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who spoke about the civil rights movement’s dedication to ending poverty, and National Education Association President Becky Pringle who spoke about the Trump administration perpetuating “the greatest assault on public education that we’ve ever seen in this country.”
“One of the reasons we wanted to be here on the Capitol steps was to give the American people an opportunity to tell their stories,” Jeffries said. “A budget is not cold numbers on a piece of paper. It represents our values, and it has deep implications for the American people. This particular budget — it will hurt children, it will hurt families, it will hurt veterans. Some of our colleagues who serve in this Capitol talk a lot about family values, but that’s rhetoric if at the same time you’re talking about family values, you’re undermining American families. We’re not going to stand for it.”
“We’re here to get into some good trouble on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said later in the broadcast.
“Necessary trouble,” Booker added.
