“Everyone listening, every voter in the country really needs to know that the House Republican budget that was presented this week basically is a ‘Billionaire’s First’ budget.”
Robyn Hyden is the Executive Director of Alabama Arise, and this was her immediate response on last Saturday’s live broadcast of The Valley Labor Report when asked what is the most important thing to know about all of these sweeping federal cuts President Trump, Elon Musk, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are making, as well as the new budget that House Republicans have put forward..
“We’re talking about massive tax cuts and continuing ongoing tax cuts for billionaires and for corporations,” she continues. “In order to finance these tax cuts, our Government is discussing massive cuts — $2.5 trillion in cuts, and these are going to hit southern states particularly hard, these are going to hit red states who put this government in power the hardest.”
As Hyden notes, Alabama is the seventh largest beneficiary of federal funding in the United States — according to an AL.com report, the State of Alabama received nearly $15 billion in federal funding in 2024. “Our surrounding states are very similar, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia… it’s the same story,” she explained.
Among the cuts being threatened is Medicaid, which could see proposed cuts of $900 billion. “Not only would these cuts put our state economies into a freefall and cause a recession, half of our kids and our states are at risk of losing Medicaid health insurance coverage.”
Hyden referred to the situation as an “emergency,” with a call to action: “[A]nyone who has ever benefitted from Medicaid or SNAP… call our members of Congress this week.”
But a logical question to ask of course is: Why? Are these cuts really “necessary?” What reason is being given by the administration and House Republicans? The reason that’s been put forward at least out in the open is that these cuts would help incentivize people to join the workforce — the implication here being a Republican-favorite that people are just taking a “free ride” with government aid. But is there any weight to this? Hyden does not hesitate to say “No.”
“It’s just not true that these programs prevent work, we find the opposite,” she explains. “So the reasons that people are dropping out of the workforce are because they cannot afford child care. They don’t get paid enough. They don’t have adequate health care, and are having premature disability and chronic disabling conditions. States that have a robust social safety net actually find increased labor force participation.”
Hyden explains that, in Alabama in particular, it’s nearly impossible to take a free ride. “We have the leanest Medicaid program almost in the entire country, in Alabama. It’s just a myth that you can drop out of the labor force and have a huge amount of support available to you.”
And on the contrary, Hyden continued, data shows that these programs are a hand up for people who are without benefits or survival wages, and are a crucial safety net for the largest percentage of people in the United States who are poor: children. In fact one of the potential cuts will be school lunch programs, which are incredibly popular and critical for many kids and students.
Hyden explains that the overall outlook is bleak and dire, and that these cuts will hit families hard.
“When we’re talking about cutting SNAP benefits, cutting Medicaid health insurance… we’re hitting families with parents and grandparents in nursing homes, we’re hitting single parent households that are struggling just to make ends meet.”
Watch our full interview with Robyn Hyden: