Jeffries rallies Democrats against Trump's deep cuts to programs like Medicaid

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Feb 24, 2025

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Rep. Hakeem Jeffries on Monday rallied fellow House Democrats to unite against President Donald Trump’s proposed budget plan, which he says would pave the way to draconian cuts in popular programs like Medicaid to fund massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

Lashing out at what he derides as the “GOP tax scam,” the Brooklyn minority leader urged Democratic lawmakers to stay close to Capitol Hill as a series of planned Republican votes unfolds as early as Tuesday.

“Far-right extremists are determined to push through $4.5 trillion of tax breaks for wealthy Republican donors and well-connected corporations, explode the debt and saddle everyday Americans with the bill by ending Medicaid as we know it,” Jeffries wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter.

“We must be at full strength to enhance our opportunity to stop the GOP Tax Scam in its tracks.”

Democrats plan to gather Tuesday on the steps of the Capitol to “make sure that the country can hear from everyday Americans whose lives will be devastated by the Republican budget scheme,” Jeffries said.

Republican lawmakers led by House Speaker Mike Johnson are pushing to pass big chunks of Trump’s agenda by passing what he calls a single “big, beautiful bill.”

Although the GOP controls both houses of Congress, Republicans only hold a three-vote majority in the House. That means Johnson can likely only afford to lose a couple of votes from his side of the aisle, which may be a tall order.

Some Republican fiscal hardliners want the plan to include even deeper cuts while several moderates from swing districts fear voters will punish them for going along with deep cuts to popular social programs.

One budget hawk, Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Indiana, has already said she opposes the plan and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, a regular thorn in Johnson’s side, has been telling fellow lawmakers he is also against it.

If Jeffries can convince fellow Democrats to vote in lockstep against the plan, he has a fighting chance of blocking it and inflicting a major political black eye on Trump.

Democrats are also playing up the loud backlash some GOP lawmakers faced last week from voters in their districts who gave them an earful about the cuts and billionaire Elon Musk’s mercurial budget-slashing efforts.

“Concerned citizens across America, from the Heartland to the Central Valley of California, the Upper Midwest to the Deep South, the Northeast suburbs to Southwestern towns, made clear that they do not support the House Republican budget,” Jeffries said in the letter.

The outspoken pushback is an effort by Jeffries to lift Democrats’ spirit of resistance to Trump amid the flurry of executive orders he has issued in his first month in office.

It recalls the effort by activists to cripple Trump’s agenda in his first term, an uprising that bore fruit when Democrats swept to big wins in the 2018 midterm elections.

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