Editorials

Despite Kentucky’s loyalty to GOP, Trump’s budget would hurt Kentuckians deeply | Opinion

By Herald-Leader Editorial Board

Updated May 22, 2025 12:23 PM

Americans are divided over President Donald Trump’s budget — referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which just passed in the House, according to new polling. Photo from the White House, Facebook

Kentucky is the most crimson of states, which in 2024 voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump, while sending a Republican majority delegation to Congress.

But the House budget released early Thursday morning — won by one vote — shows no such loyalty back. Instead it creates a blueprint that will decimate rural hospitals, empty food banks, and leave our children hungry and our families poorer.

It is early days, and no doubt the Senate will make substantial changes to the final product of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” But the budget’s detrimental effects on everyone but the very rich should send voters of every stripe to their phones and emails to protest.

As Jason Bailey of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy said: “One in three Kentuckians receive health coverage through Medicaid, including children, seniors, low-wage workers and people with disabilities. Similarly, 587,000 Kentuckians receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food assistance to help afford groceries. These programs are essential to better health and are especially necessary in a time of rising household costs..”

He added: “They inject tens of billions of dollars into the Kentucky economy each year, creating jobs at grocery stores, hospitals and health clinics. But the House bill makes harmful cuts to both, ensuring that doctor visits and groceries will be more difficult to come by for far too many.”

Bailey and many others have noted the budget could have continued middle class tax cuts, while letting the upper income ones expire, instead of cutting programs that harm the most vulnerable.

But that’s not what the modern GOP is about. Cruelty is the point of the Trump administration, and its underlying ethos of greed meant that the richest Americans became the top priority.

If they were cutting these programs in aim of reducing deficit, putting us on more stable financial footing, that would be an understandable policy. After all, our credit rating was downgraded this week because of debt concerns. That’s why Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was one of just two lawmakers who voted no.

“This bill is a debt bomb ticking,” said the 4th District Republican.

But instead, policy choice is avarice, and a proposal that is expected to add $2.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

It also estimated that in 2027, the plan would cause the bottom 10% of Americans to lose the equivalent of 2% of their income because of reduced benefits and increased costs to food and health care, while the top 10% would see a 4% increase to their income.

In addition, the bill would expand the estate exemption, meaning that a single person with $15 million or a couple with $30 million could leave that estate to their family without paying any taxes on it.

The bill sneaks in some unconscionable smaller changes, such as killing a Biden rule to increase the number of caregivers in nursing homes, and ending tax credits on clean energy projects, some of which are already underway.

But the biggest problem is cuts to Medicaid, which keeps millions of people out of medical bankruptcy. It helps our most vulnerable, but many more, like middle-class families who need it for a relative’s nursing home, or the thousands of Kentuckians who need access to addiction recovery services.

As Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, hardly a bleeding heart liberal, noted in his New York Times editorial “Don’t Cut Medicaid,” the plan to cut insurance for the working poor is “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

Now is the time to prove him right.

As much as it sometimes seem impossible to get through to our elected lawmakers, it’s important they know how their constituents feel.

Remind Rep. Hal Rogers what he said back in February: Representing one of the poorest regions of the nation, he declared: “We have no intentions of gutting Medicaid or other vital programs. However, we are on a mission to cut waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars, so that we can protect the future of programs like Medicaid for years to come.”

He voted yes on the House bill.

Tell senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul what you think. They still have the power to oppose a budget that could so much harm to our state.

Tell them all and tell them often. They work for the voters of Kentucky and should be doing all they can to help it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

317 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-2541

mcconnell.senate.gov

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

167 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

Phone: (202) 224-4343

paul.senate.gov

Rep. James Comer (R-1st)