1. United States
2. Neb.
3. Letter

It's hard to blame the Democrats for people not getting SNAP benefits when the Republican president goes to court to make sure people don't get SNAP benefits. If that’s not enough…the Trump administration sent a memo to states demanding they stop paying out full SNAP benefits and threatening financial penalties. It’s a win-win for the GOP, I guess? Standing your ground against our military, seniors, single parent families, underemployed, and anyone else who qualifies for SNAP. Sorry, folks, no Thanksgiving for you! You should’ve paid attention to that section in Project 2025 on defunding SNAP. Speaking of Project 2025, it also calls for removing the consumer protection provisions of the Affordable Care Act for nonsubsidized marketplace plans. This makes sense now seeing as though your party is trying to kill these subsidies. No subsidies means no protections. Insurance companies could reinstate their draconian practices of denying people with preexisting conditions, setting annual and lifetime coverage limits, and even increasing the cost for women. As both a woman and a cancer survivor, I’m fairly certain I would be ineligible for any insurance plan. But I digress. So you want to gut the ACA. What’s your party’s plan? Sending money for health costs directly to Americans as Trump just said? Nope. Treasury Secretary Bessent said there’s no formal White House proposal to defund the ACA in favor of sending money directly to Americans. OK, so maybe we believe Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana? He said that he's envisioning flexible health savings accounts that would be pre-funded by the federal government. I’ll bite. How much pre-funding are we talking about? My 13-year-old son’s recent cancer treatment cost $750,000. I have insurance through my employer, so I ended up paying about $7,000. Can you help me understand how a Trump HSA would prevent medical bankruptcy for folks who aren’t so lucky? Will Trump’s HSA magically multiply by the thousands? Will it negotiate the cost of chemo drugs, PET scans, surgery, radiation and hospitalization stays? Or would we be responsible for those things while simultaneously navigating medical nightmares? My wild guess is the GOP has zero concrete plans to help Americans after it guts the ACA. If we change its name to Trump Care, would you suddenly care about your constituents who are on the ACA? If you don’t care about the ACA, surely you care about the ending government shutdown, right? Republicans: We demand a clean funding bill to reopen the government. No extras. No exceptions. No special interests. No healthcare extensions. Democrats, stop trying to add things. Also Republicans: Add a nationwide abortion ban. You can’t add anything but we can. What a surprise. Speaking of surprises. How about Trump’s recent announcement about 50-year mortgages? The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 became law on July 21, 2010, as protection for both banks and mortgage holders after the last financial crash. Dodd-Frank doesn't allow for a 50-year mortgage as it's not considered a qualified mortgage. What would that mean under Trump’s plan? You guessed it - private investors and riskier lenders…and an even greater burden of debt for middle-income Americans. So much winning. Seafood towers at Mar-A-Lago. Mounting debt for the rest of us. Well, maybe not you. But definitely, us, your constituents. Add a subject line