By Andy Miles and Richard Chew
Last Friday, U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) joined WCPT’s Richard Chew to talk about opportunities for Democrats to regain ground with disaffected voters and mount an effective resistance to President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpopular actions.
“I can’t think of a more important time for people to be in public service,” Budzinski said, noting the high turnout for a recent tele-town hall, where almost 10,000 people dialed in (five times the usual number). “A lot of people are really scared,” she told WCPT.
Budzinski also highlighted a recent “impromptu town hall” that took place in Staunton, Ill., which, she said, “was just going to be a small gathering of us as Democrats. It ended up being 125 people. And I just think it speaks to the level of anxiety that is out there with voters.”
The second-term Democrat told WCPT that many voters in her downstate congressional district “want to know, rightfully, what am I doing to fight back. They want to know what they can be doing. And so, I think it’s really important right now that we’re showing up in our communities and listening.”
Budzinski said she is focused on is “telling the stories of impact” of what federal job and service cuts mean for individual Americans, particularly with the ongoing dismantling of the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs (VA).
“We’ve got to call that out,” she said, “and we’ve got to call that out on social media, [and] we’ve got to do that in the press.”
Budzinski also stressed the importance of clarifying for voters that it’s the Democratic Party that is “protecting the working people, the retirees in this country. It is not the other side, who is standing with the MAGA billionaires in this country, trying to get them a lower tax rate, lower the corporate tax rate. That’s who they are. We are for fighting to improve your everyday life, and we have plans that are going to do that,” she said.
Trump, she added, “hasn’t done a damn thing to address rising costs. He’s not fighting for you. And so, I think that it’s just incumbent on the Democrats to stay laser-focused on how we’re going to improve the lives of people.”
Budzinski, who was recently named vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities, Risk Management and Credit, said she plans to meet with farmers in her district while Congress is in recess this week.
“I feel very passionately about the fact that, as Democrats, we should be having a new conversation in rural communities and not yield the field to the Republicans anymore on these issues,” highlighting GOP cuts to Medicaid “that are going to devastate my rural hospitals” and U.S. Department of Agriculture loan programs “that my farmers have been waiting for their checks on.”
