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Bonamici will bring Arielle Kane, a maternal health policy analyst who was fired from her job at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Firing her blocks work that saves lives of mothers and babies, Bonamici said in a statement.
“I’ve said we’re always trying to find smarter, better ways to do things, but what they’re doing is neither smart nor better,” Bonamici said. "They're not really saving that much money, if at all, and they're doing it without really thought about what they're cutting."
Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Andrea Salinas, Maxine Dexter, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, walked out of Trump's speech in protest.
"After listening to lie after lie after lie, I just couldn't stay anymore," Bonamici said in a selfie-style video posted to Bluesky.
Bonamici said the Democrats were working hard, but emphasized that Republicans hold the power in the House of Representatives and lawmakers don’t have standing to sue the administration. A person in the audience shouted a response.“If they break the rules, you break the rules,” they said, sparking applause.
She answered, “I’m gonna do everything I can to fight that, to any test of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.”
Bonamici reported that she received about 6,000 calls and emails this past week. She said that people tend to focus on local and regional issues, and the number one issue she had received calls about this past week was firings of forest service employees. She stated, “These are not normal times.”
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, both Democrats, hosted their first town hall in the region since Trump’s return to office and heard a wave of confusion and frustration from constituents. That’s been the trend nationally over the past several weeks as members of Congress returned home amid a wave of cuts and policy changes by the new Republican administration.
“We can always find smarter, better ways to do things, like around the FAFSA (Free Application for Student Aid) rollout, you know, that could have been a heck of a lot better,” Bonamici said, “but you don’t just lay people off without a plan or without an understanding of the consequences of the layoffs.”