Top Illinois Democrats led by Gov. JB Pritzker and Sen. Dick Durbin on Friday made an impassioned plea for the public to help fight potential cuts to Medicaid and other programs by President Donald Trump and Republicans who control Congress, acknowledging their party has little power to counter the GOP’s economic agenda.
“We’re facing a real challenge. Red alert, everybody,” Pritzker said during a news conference in the Illinois Medical District in Chicago’s Near West Side, where he was joined by Durbin and several members of Illinois’ congressional delegation. “I mean, it is time to wake up. Get out. Do something.”
One by one, Pritzker and his fellow Democrats spoke out against any moves by the Trump administration to cut off Illinoisans from Medicaid, a state and federally funded health insurance program for people with low incomes and disabilities. About 3.4 million people in Illinois were on Medicaid during the last fiscal year, which ended June 30.
“Together, we’re sending a clear message: hands off Medicaid,” Pritzker said at the beginning of the gathering.
Pritzker said he was seeking to rile up “every person out there that brings their whole heart to this and stands up and fights.”
“The public needs to speak up, speak out, show up at their congressional town hall meetings, they need to pick up the phone to call Congress, they need to call their friends in other states,” he said.
While Pritzker pitched a budget with a small surplus in Springfield last week, there’s no way the state of Illinois can “pick up the difference” of the vast, multibillion-dollar costs of Medicaid if the federal government pulls funding, he said Friday. Funding cuts would lead people to lose coverage, he said.
“People will die, and blood will be on the hands of the Trump-Vance administration and Republicans in Congress,” Pritzker said.
The other Democratic officials joined Pritzker in describing the possible cuts in dire terms.
“If all that you do is cut, cut, cut, all that you get is blood, blood, blood,” U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago said.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Schaumburg talked about a letter he received from a man who lives with autism and pleaded with the congressman to help him “save Medicaid,” saying in the letter that he “cannot be healthy” without it.
“This man is about to see his Medicaid and his services cut, and for what? For tax breaks for billionaires, oligarchs and broligarchs. That is wrong,” Krishnamoorthi said, his voice rising in frustration.
In addition to traditional health care for the poor and people with disabilities, cuts to Medicaid would affect mental health care and hospital finances, and could have downstream effects for all Illinoisans if people avoid preventive health care and end up in emergency rooms, the Democrats said.
The Democrats’ plea to Republicans to leave Medicaid alone comes days after Pritzker and his political allies signed a letter pressing the White House to unlock nearly $2 billion in federal funding for Illinois that they say is being wrongly held up.
Like Friday’s news conference, the letter marked a united political front from some of the most nationally prominent Illinois Democrats to counter Trump’s efforts to disrupt norms in the federal government. It also followed a federal judge’s ruling on Tuesday that extended a block on Trump’s sweeping funding freeze.
A January memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget that directed federal agencies to temporarily pause all federal assistance was rescinded. But when the plan outlined in the memo was set to be implemented, Pritzker’s office said it was unable to access the payment systems for Medicaid. And according to this week’s letter, leaders “received widespread reports” about inability to access funds.
And on Tuesday, House Republicans on Capitol Hill saw their GOP budget blueprint narrowly pass with a 217-215 vote, with no support from Democrats, bringing Trump a step closer from seeing a bill that includes more than $4 trillion in tax breaks and spending cuts of $2 trillion.
The tax breaks and spending cuts are being proposed as billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk leads efforts to slash spending at federal agencies and fire thousands of federal workers across the U.S.
Even some Republican lawmakers have worried that many of the proposed cuts, including potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending, which includes Medicaid, could hurt their constituents. But Republicans said Medicaid was not listed specifically in the preliminary budget framework, which The Associated Press verified.
Still, Pritzker on Friday mentioned how Trump and the GOP’s budget plans have prompted backlash in certain red areas of the country, with some Republican lawmakers facing backlash over the proposals in their own districts.
“We hope that people will hear us, speak up, speak out and get the job done,” Pritzker said.
The Associated Press contributed.
