The Real Welfare Queens Are in Congress

Starving the poor to feed the rich isn’t fiscal policy. It’s theft.

While you were asleep, or maybe just trying to survive another unsettlingly dark news cycle, House Republicans passed a bill so dystopian they should have done it wearing capes. In the dead of night, without cameras or courage, they pushed through the largest cut to SNAP in history, gutting food assistance for millions of low-income families. But don’t worry, if you make over a million dollars a year, you’re getting a six-figure tax break!! Republicans got your back (and your bank account).

This wasn’t governing. It was looting.
This wasn’t a budget. It was a heist.

They didn’t vote to help you. They voted to enrich themselves and their donors. They gutted the programs that keep people fed, housed, and alive, not to balance the budget, but to pay for more tax breaks. Specifically, to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the same ones that handed billions to the already obscenely wealthy. The ones Trump is now campaigning to make permanent for himself and his billionaire friends. And speaking of self-enrichment, let’s not forget: since taking office, Trump has funneled at least $1.6 billion into his own businesses through a fake crypto scheme, donations, selective government spending, and events held at his properties. That’s not leadership. It’s looting in broad daylight.

This bill doesn’t just take food from children. It slashes $880 billion from Medicaid. It throws over five million people off health coverage with cruel new work requirements. It strips all federal Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood for ten years, cutting off cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing, prenatal care, and basic health services from millions. Most of them are low-income people in rural and underserved communities.

It’s projected to strip healthcare from 13.7 million people. Not CEOs. Not hedge fund managers. Not Mar-a-Lago donors. But working people. Poor families. Mothers deciding between rent and diapers. People with disabilities. Seniors. Voters in red states. People in places where Planned Parenthood is the only provider for miles. These are the people who will suffer.

And the politicians who passed it, 86 percent of them men, will never have to feel the impact. They’ll never know what it’s like to sit in a Planned Parenthood waiting room, scared and alone. They’ll never feel the panic of checking their bank balance before buying groceries. They’ll never worry about whether their kid’s asthma meds will run out before payday. They don’t use SNAP. They don’t need Medicaid. And they’ll never be pregnant.

But they passed this bill anyway. During the night. In the dark. Because even they know it’s not something you do when you're proud.

They passed it knowing full well who it would hurt. And the cruelest irony is, many of those people voted for them. Because they believed the promises. They believed someone in Washington might finally have their back. They voted for safety, dignity, stability. Instead, they’re getting cut off.

This isn’t fiscal discipline. It’s opportunistic cruelty.
It’s not leadership. It’s theft.

And the saddest part is, the people doing the robbing are stealing from the very folks who trusted them to help.

So no, I don’t want to hear one more word from some guy in a six-thousand-dollar suit ranting on cable news about “welfare queens” while poor families are footing the bill for his mortgage in the hamptons. Don’t you dare call yourself fiscally responsible while you’re living off the interest of tax breaks that working people paid for. If you’re in Congress to serve yourself instead of the public, congrats, you’re the one living off government benefits. If your voting record reads like a gift registry for billionaires, maybe you’re the one gaming the system. And if you’re gutting medicaid so your donors can buy another yacht, then I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’re the welfare queen.