By Gary Zuckett, WV CAG Co-Director
I spent most of last week in another hub of bad ideas—Washington, D.C. Mindy Holcomb, CAG Healthcare Organizer, and I attended our national People’s Action ‘Fly-in’ to lobby our Congress critters and get into some ‘good trouble’ outside several targets—the profiteers killing off affordable housing, Big Insurance killing us by denying healthcare, and Fossil Fools killing the planet. Check out those links to watch live videos of our street actions.
Tuesday’s activities were in the House and Senate office buildings and were much more subdued but just as, if not more, important. People’s Action activists from 17 states mobilized to meet with Congressional reps and staffers to send a unified message — “Don’t pass drastic cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security to pay for tax cuts for corporations and millionaires!” According to the WV Center on Budget & Policy, federal funds make up close to half of WV’s state budget, and any cuts to federal funding will fall on the state to make up or cut state programs. 
Mindy and I visited the offices of our Senators and Representatives to carry this message, with an additional kicker in reference to the Administrative Coup happening all around them — “Preserve the constitutional separation of powers! Don’t give your power over to the Executive Branch because if you do, you’ll never get it back!”
As expected, these discussions mostly yielded platitudes. The House vote that evening just barely passed. Their excuse for voting ‘yes’ at the start of the Budget Reconciliation process—which sets the baselines for the spending cuts and tax giveaways—was, “We’re not voting for specific cuts to Medicaid or any other programs— It’s just a procedural vote. Specific cuts will be decided in the committee hearings.”
To this we said, “Yes, you are! You’re voting to cut $2.5 trillion from Medicaid and other social programs, and in the same vote provide $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for millionaires, and corporations!” As you can see, we were entirely out of sync in that discussion.
Action Item: Join the Call for Recess Town Halls
We debriefed as a group after the meetings on the Hill, and one of the tactics we discussed that carried over into our WV United call last Friday is this: Please call your member of the House in DC, either Carol Miller in District 1 (southern WV) or Riley Moore in District 2 (up north). Ask them why they voted to cut the above-mentioned funding for Medicaid and social programs to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the rich. Ask them when and where their town hall meetings will be this month in their home districts so they can explain this directly to us, their constituents! See this Town Hall Toolkit from our partners at the WV Center on Budget & Policy for actions you can take to pressure our federal delegation to hold in-person town halls during the March recess.
Meanwhile, Back in Charleston
It’s hard to be in two circus rings at once, so I’m still getting caught up on the damage done in Charleston this past week. Read through the rest of this Capital Eye update to find out more. But before you do, please take a moment to renew your WV Citizen Action membership or send in a supporting donation to keep our lobby team going!
Also, you might want to attend two upcoming events at the Capitol: Black Policy Day on Monday the 10th and Environmental Day (E-Day) on Monday the 17th! Heading to Charleston? Email us at info@wvcag.org, and we’ll see if we can hook you up with one of our team!