by Alina Rose Chen CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD — “Budgets make a difference, and I think this budget the Republicans passed — the Trump budget — was reckless, cynical, and mean-spirited,” Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday at a press conference decrying the tax-and-spending-cuts bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Along with a number of other state leaders and Connecticut federal legislators, the governor emphasized the negative impacts of funding cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, and other social services during the presser, held just three days after President Donald Trump signed the act into law.
The event was held at Charter Oak Health Center, one of the federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) that will be affected by the new legislation, with approximately 70 percent of its patients receiving Medicaid coverage.
“We’ve made a big effort in our budget, because the budget is a reflection of our values,” Lamont said, referencing previous efforts within the state to expand insurance coverage and increase healthcare accessibility for Connecticut residents. “We were making extraordinary progress there — now this Trump budget bill does just the opposite.”
In the coming months, state leaders will be working to parse through the bill, which is nearly 1,000 pages long, to fully understand its impact on Connecticut residents. According to a CT Voices for Children projection, approximately 156,000 people in Connecticut could lose health coverage under the bill.
Democrats across the board have slammed the bill for kicking people off Medicaid, a federal health insurance program for the poor, in order to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, all while ballooning the federal deficit. Republicans have defended the bill as reducing the cost through those very same tax cuts.
In the meantime, state Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves said Monday that the state has invested $80 million into supporting FQHCs. She said Connecticut is having conversations with other states that have implemented work requirements to understand how the 20 hours-per-week work requirement applies to federal aid recipients. She also emphasized that, according to the KFF, 73 percent of the Connecticut adults on the state’s Medicaid program, HUSKY, and over 60 percent on SNAP, also known as food stamps, are currently working.
“This is not about laziness,” Barton Reeves said. “This is not about any of the myths that are being perpetuated about poor and low income people. This is about people who have families and work two or three jobs. This is about people in hospitals, people in nursing homes. This is about elders who need assistance in heating and living their lives and food.”
DSS Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves: “It’s truly unconscionable.”
Barton Reeves also referenced the projection by the federal Office of Management and Budget, which suggests that by 2035, 11 million people in the United States will have lost healthcare due to the Big Beautiful Bill. “It’s truly unconscionable that we can think there’s a trade off between living with dignity and care — and a tax cut.”
While it remains unclear the extent to which Connecticut residents will suffer the effects of the budget cut, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney said on Monday that he is already looking forward to the proposal of a 2026 budget in Congress which he hopes will mitigate the greater effects of the Big Beautiful Bill.
“There’s going to be a fight over that budget, and we have the opportunity to reverse some of these most damaging provisions before they have to take effect,” Courtney said. “There is still the opportunity to save America. I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s true — saving America is what we need to do in the months and elections ahead.”