Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.
The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short.
It was all that penny-pinching that drove the part-time tax consultant to abandon the Democratic Party this fall and vote for
Donald Trump.
“He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, [implausibly] said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”
Network exit polls suggest [Trump] erased the advantage Democrats had with low-income voters across the country.
Now, low-income Americans who voted for Trump say they are counting on him to keep their benefits intact even while his Cabinet picks and Republican lawmakers call on him to reduce federal spending.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — whom Trump has chosen to lead a new nongovernmental advisory panel, the “Department of Government Efficiency” — have said they want to trim $2 trillion from the government’s annual budget, a cut that some experts say could be accomplished only by slashing entitlement programs.
[
Since total discretionary spending -- all of it -- in FY2023 was $1.7 trillion, it doesn't take an expert to see that cutting $2T would require cuts to mandatory spending.]
[Although Trump has said Social Security is safe...] GOP leaders in Congress and Trump advisers are considering
significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal aid.
“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” Mosura said,shifting the conversation as though she were speaking to Trump. “Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”
[The city Mosura lives in depends on a lot of federal aid. 90% of students qualify for free school lunches.]
City Administrator Chris Frye, a Republican and former mayor of New Castle, said he expects GOP leaders will push for some changes to how federal programs are administered. But Frye urged his party to show “empathy” when it comes to determining the actual benefits that people receive.
Davis, a retired artist, subsists on a monthly $1,300 Social Security payment and $75 in food stamps. ... Asked whether she worries that Trump’s agenda could hurt the poor, Davis said the incoming president is “too smart for that.”
“You can’t wipe out half of the population” of New Castle, Davis said. “
We are old and tired and just want to be taken care of"