By Lauren Burke

As congressional Republicans prepare to make $1.5 trillion dollars in budget cuts, cuts that will include government assistance to low income Americans, Rev. William Barber traveled to the U.S. Capitol to push back against them. The trip to speak out against what he views as economic injustice and unfairness was not his first to Washington. It is unlikely to be his last. When Donald Trump began his second term as President 99 days ago he spoke out about austerity and making the government smaller. So far, Trump’s approval ratings are at a record low — lower than any other President of the United States in the modern era. In a statement before his arrival, Rev. Barber stated that “his urgent action comes as Congress considers devastating cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and housing—threatening millions of children, seniors, and people with disabilities.” Republicans in Congress are planning to cut one and a half trillion dollars from the budget. One of the obvious targets that would certainly be on the table is Medicaid. Republicans in the U.S. House in support of Trump’s efforts are positioned to cut the program by a never-before-seen amount.

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“It’s a time for us to first move in any nonviolent type of protest — first of all, you have to get your facts so that you’re not focusing on personality, but policy and the real problems. And second of all, you have to make sure, as we did on Ash Wednesday, that your adversary actually knows what’s bothering you. You don’t just start doing things,” Rev. Barber said as he spoke after his protest in the U.S. Capitol. Members of the U.S. Capitol Police closed off the Capitol Rotunda and hurriedly told associates with him to exit as Barber and others read scripture and prayed in the Rotunda near a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Their effort to stop over one trillion in cuts in the budget is likely to be unsuccessful. “You actually have to have the kind of redemptive hope that you believe if you show the folk the fact they would change, and you can’t be frivolous about that they may not but you have to believe in that possibility, because if you give up on humanity, then you’re doing the same thing they’re doing, part of what It means to be in a nonviolent movement is that if I didn’t believe in the possibility of my worst enemy becoming my best friend, I’d stop preaching. I wouldn’t put on robes and crosses and stuff. Wouldn’t be any need. And you say you’re naive,” Rev. Barber added. This week members of Congress are in markups and budget talks as the details on the final proposals of what will be defunded slowly emerge.

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