Jeffries Rejects Republicans’ Welfare Reform Proposals

House Democrat leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries suggested at a Thursday press conference that he would vigorously oppose Republicans’ reform proposals for Medicaid and other welfare benefits, with the hope that their budget reconciliation bill fails and the GOP leadership has to seek Democrats’ votes.

Jeffries, D-N.Y.—who spoke at a press briefing at the same time that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., was struggling to find a deal with fiscal hawks and blue state Republicans lobbying for tax deductions—has sought to fan the flames of disagreements within the GOP over the budget in order to call for the bill’s rejection.

“House Republicans have voted to take food out of the mouths of children, families, seniors, and veterans as part of their toxic scheme to enact massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors like Elon Musk,” said Jeffries.

The GOP budget would fulfill a number of President Donald Trump’s campaign promises such as extending his signature first-term 2017 tax cuts and fully funding border security.

In order to afford some of those promises, Republicans are proposing a number of reforms to programs such as Medicaid.

Some of those are intended to prevent illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from receiving benefits, such as requiring citizenship verification for Medicaid enrollees, and requiring a Social Security number from anyone who wants to receive a child tax credit.

Asked whether those measures made sense and if he would support them, Jeffries told The Daily Signal he wasn’t planning on backing Republicans’ measures.

“We support Medicaid as it currently exists,” said Jeffries. “And the efforts to enact the largest Medicaid cut in American history is unacceptable, and it’s unnecessary.”

He continued, “If my Republican colleagues want to have a conversation about how we can make health care delivery in the United States of America more affordable and more effective, and more efficient … Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee are more than willing to have that conversation.”

“But we believe that in America, access to high quality health care is not a privilege, it’s a right … . This is not an effort that we can support, and House Democrats are unified in our strong and principled opposition.”

But Jeffries’ position is actually not an easy one. If Republicans’ budget fails to pass, then the child tax credit increase under Trump’s 2017 tax plan would expire, dropping from $2,000 to $1,000.

The Daily Signal asked Jeffries which party he thought would suffer in the midterms if the bill failed and parents lost their child tax credits.

“We’re going to resolve this issue at some point, by December 31st of 2025 [when the credit expires],” said Jeffries.

He then laid out his hope that the bill would fail, forcing Republicans to seek Democrat votes.

 “The one big, ugly bill will hurt the American people … . And if it falls—which it should, in the best interests of the American people—then we’ll actually have an opportunity to have a bipartisan conversation about what makes sense for everyday Americans,” he said.

“Republicans own anything that happens, because they’ve chosen to go down this road of reconciliation to cut Democrats out of the legislative process,” he said.

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