ICYMI: NH Leaders Called Out Sununu and Brown for Supporting Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that Cut Granite Staters’ Health Care and Food Assistance

ICYMI: NH Leaders Called Out Sununu and Brown for Supporting Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that Cut Granite Staters’ Health Care and Food Assistance

In Case You Missed It, New Hampshire leaders held a press conference about John Sununu and Scott Brown supporting Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that made drastic cuts to health care and food assistance for Granite Staters. 

Watch here and read the transcript below to learn more about how Sununu and Brown are running to sell Granite Staters out to Trump while his dangerous agenda kicks thousands of Granite Staters off their health insurance, forces hospitals and health care centers to close, and makes it harder for families to put food on the table. 

Deputy House Democratic Leader Laura Telerski

• This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump signing into law his Big Ugly Bill that cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid and 186 billion from SNAP to fund tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. 
   
• The bill was the largest cut to health care in our nation’s history, and both Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, John Sununu and Scott Brown, have lined up in support of it, selling Granite Staters out to Trump and his agenda. 
   
• While speaking to voters, Sununu said that Republicans “did the right thing” by passing this bill and praised it for paring back Medicaid, while Scott Brown has outright said that he supports it. 
   
• Neither candidate will admit it, but across the state, the Big Ugly Bill will have a devastating impact on our communities, ripping health care from Granite Staters,  making it harder to get food assistance, all while hurting our economy and raising costs for all of us. 
   
• Estimates show that two to three billion dollars will be cut from Medicaid here in New Hampshire over the next decade, threatening more than 170,000 Granite Staters who rely on it for healthcare. And it’s important to remember that half of them are children.
   
• Since the law came into effect, over 13,000 Granite Staters have already dropped off Medicaid, including 4,500 children, and projections show that as many as 33,000 Granite Staters could be kicked off of their health insurance by 2034.
   
• Thousands of Granite Staters losing health insurance means fewer people getting the wellness and regular care that they need, patients filling up more costly emergency rooms with advanced illness, skyrocketing uncompensated care, and less support for an already-strained health care system. 
   
• And the reality is every single one of us will feel this impact and pay the cost.
   
• It’s clear that Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are undermining everything else, but Sununu and Brown are more interested in demonstrating that they are in lockstep with Trump and the Republican Party than standing up for New Hampshire. 
   
• That’s no surprise, since both candidates have been consistently campaigning on Trump’s disastrous policies and they have abysmal track records on health care. 
   
• Sununu’s record includes voting multiple times to cut Medicare and Medicaid, as well as voting against letting Medicare negotiate lower prescription drug prices for seniors. 
   
• Meanwhile, Brown voted for legislation that would trigger deep Medicare and Medicaid cuts. 
   
• And now they will do anything to get back to the U.S. Senate and continue their crusades to gut these vital programs. 
   
• It’s that out-of-touch mentality and willingness to cave to the most extreme voices in their party that got Sununu and Brown kicked out of the Senate before. And now it’ll be exactly what prevents them from going back. 
   
• While Sununu and Brown are too busy appeasing Trump to deliver real affordability that helps our neighbors, Granite Staters recognize the stakes of this upcoming election. They are ready to elect a Democratic U.S. Senator and Democrats up and down the ballot who are bent on lowering costs and ensuring our future is affordable. 

Dian McCarthy

• My name is Dian McCarthy and I am running for State Senate in District 16. For almost 20 years, I’ve been an advocate for children and families. More recently, after facing my own battle with cancer, I became an even stronger advocate for accessible, affordable health care. 
   
• If there’s one thing my experiences taught me, it is how important it is that families can access food and affordable health care. 
   
• The so-called Big Beautiful Bill cut nearly one trillion dollars from health care and food programs that working families across our country depend on. The same bill gave massive tax cuts to billionaires and giant corporations. 
   
• The impact of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill here in New Hampshire is actually quite ugly. It’s estimated that tens of thousands of New Hampshire families will lose their health care as a result of the Bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act.
   
• Republicans made a choice. They decided your groceries and doctor visits matter less than a tax break for someone worth 50 billion dollars.
   
• This comes at a time when Kelly Ayotte and our Republican legislature in New Hampshire — including my state senate opponent — have just added premiums for Medicaid. This threatens health care access for even more Granite Staters.
   
• I can’t state this clearly enough. When you lose your health, every part of your life is affected. Every part. Good health is a cornerstone of a successful, productive society. The people of New Hampshire need it and they deserve it. They deserve access to health care so that they and our state can thrive.
   
• Food assistance programs like SNAP are critical to helping families put food on the table without having to choose between food and other basic needs like medicine, rent, utilities. You may have read about a mother in Portsmouth who told the New Hampshire Bulletin that she relied on SNAP to help feed her children after being laid off. She also shared the anxiety she felt at the prospect of losing that help. There are stories like this happening all over New Hampshire.
   
• However, since the Bill’s passage, nearly 1,500 Granite Staters have lost their SNAP benefits as you heard, and an estimated 8,000 more New Hampshire families are at risk of losing them.
   
• These are humans. They’re adults facing any number of challenges, coming home from a long day of work trying their best to figure out how they’re going to provide for their family. They’re children leaving for school in the morning with empty stomachs or returning home on a Friday afternoon without food until they get back to school on Monday morning.
   
• Food pantries are also feeling the strain. They’re having a harder time with stocking their own shelves as federal cuts have hit them right when demand for their services has increased.
   
• We here in New Hampshire have made it very clear that we care deeply about the educational outcomes of our children. However, research has shown that hunger makes it harder to learn. Simply put, allowing our community’s children to go hungry is not supporting the teaching and learning outcomes we all want for our kids. The cuts to SNAP, the cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act — they’re not helping.
   
• Families across the state are already being forced to make impossible decisions between covering their energy bill, filling their car up with gas, and paying for groceries.
   
• And with the full consequences of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” taking effect after the midterms, who we send to Concord and Washington has never been more important.
   
• In times like these, our neighbors need support, and we need the leadership to navigate the messes this Bill has created. But neither Sununu nor Brown have expressed the willingness to cross Trump and the Washington Republicans to provide it.
   
• Whether it’s Scott Brown or John Sununu on the ballot this November, the best chance we have of pushing back against Trump’s agenda — on healthcare and everything else — is by electing a strong Democrat who will stand up for our state. 

Rep. Jared Sullivan

• We all understand that what gets passed in D.C. does not stay there. It lands directly on New Hampshire communities like those I represent. Trump’s Big Ugly Bill has not just landed hard, it has done real damage in my communities. 
   
• When this bill passed, it funded massive tax breaks for billionaires by stripping health care from working families, setting off a chain reaction throughout rural New Hampshire, with two rural North Country ambulance services closing this last year, and in my district, Ammonoosuc Community Health was forced to shut down a health care center in Franconia, impacting hundreds of patients. 
   
• Let me say this again: Because of Trump’s cuts to both Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, rural North Country ambulances have closed down and we have squeezed hundreds of patients across the region. It impacts every person across the state who visits the state’s natural resources. 
   
• Think about it: if you’re a resident of Nashua or Manchester, and you’re skiing at Cannon or riding ATVs in Coös County, and you have a medical emergency, you reasonably assume that you’ll have access to reliable EMS and ambulance services, but because of Trump’s cuts, that assumption is increasingly less reliable.
   
• These examples are not isolated. A report from Protect Our Care show that four New Hampshire hospitals are now at risk of closing and multiple clinics are either closing or in the process of shutting down currently. 
   
• This is what happens when you pull resources out of the health care system. Rural hospitals do not get to wait for better budget years. They close. Nurses leave. Families drive further. People wait until they’re very sick before they get help and more people die. 
   
• And while all of this is happening, we are told that this is necessary so that the wealthiest Americans can get even more tax breaks. 
   
• But here’s what makes this even worse: this bill isn’t even honest about what it’s doing. 
   
• The Republicans, the party of “fiscal responsibility,” are cutting medical services for millions to only partially pay for an unaffordable tax cuts for the richest, most privileged in our society — people who can afford private jets and mega yachts. 
   
• And the rest of those tax cuts are being funded by debt that your children and grandchildren are going to be stuck paying off. 
   
• Republicans currently control all levers of power in our government at the federal and New Hampshire. And while the average Granite Stater struggles with one financial hit after another, we see politicians like John Sununu and Scott Brown lining up to support the dangerous Trump agenda. 
   
• John Sununu and Scott Brown have made it very clear where they stand on this political alignment, calling New Hampshire an important state to flip to continue the Trump agenda. Think about what that means for the average Granite Stater.
   
• Most people in this state are not asking for ideological fights. They are asking simple questions: Why is it that every time Washington writes a big bill, life becomes more expensive, working people lose health care, while wealthy people get handouts?