Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) said President Donald Trump prioritizing military spending over domestic programs was “nonsense.”
Partial transcript as follows:
ED O’KEEFE: In the midst of all this, the President in recent days, told a gathering at the White House that, in his view, because of the 50 states, quote, it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. He argues the federal government shouldn’t have to pay for those programs because, quote, we have to take care of one thing, military protection.
MOORE: That’s nonsense. And that’s not what any of us want. We don’t want to be fighting foreign wars while you’re taking away our health care.
O’KEEFE: Could a state even pay for Medicaid and Medicare–
MOORE: No
O’KEEFE: –daycare without federal assistance?
MOORE: So many of the decisions that this White House is making, they are making with a clear understanding that no state has a budget to say, okay, well, we’ll just take on health care, or we’ll just take on food insecurity. We saw that happen last year when the President of the United States broke the law in order to cut SNAP. In fact, we sued them, and we won, and we beat him in court on this. But we–
O’KEEFE: Sounds like he’s going to try again, though.
MOORE: And- and- and he did try again. He actually tried to appeal the fact, you know, threw a temper tantrum, because he felt- because the judges told him that actually, no, you need to pay for food assistance for people. And what we ended up doing is, in Maryland, I actually took $63 million out of our fiscal responsibility fund, which is a fund that is made up of capital gains taxes. And I said, well, I’m not going to let the people of my state go hungry, because Washington is throwing- having a food fight. And so we made sure that SNAP and SNAP benefits were not going to be cut for the people of Maryland. But it is a deeply unfair ask to ask states and or governors, because we do things that the federal government has never done, we actually balance our budgets. And it is an unfair ask to ask us to take on what should be a joint responsibility, because the federal government has decided to stop doing its job.
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
Read the full article here