Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker host sit-in on Capitol steps over GOP budget plan
Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker hosted hundreds of supporters at the Capitol in protest of Republicans' upcoming push to pass a budget reconciliation bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., hosted hundreds of supporters at the Capitol on Sunday, sitting on the steps in protest of Republicans’ upcoming push to pass a budget reconciliation bill they hope will cut $1.5 trillion in federal spending.
“That bill, we believe, presents one of the greatest moral threats to our country that we’ve seen in terms of what it will do to providing food for the hungry, care for the elderly, services for the disabled, health care, health care for the sick and more,” Booker said at the beginning of the sit-in.
Democrats have for months warned that House Republicans’ budget blueprint would lead to over $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, a federal program that provides health insurance for low-income families.
Booker and Jeffries spoke at the beginning of the sit-in, which began around 6 a.m., about their religious upbringings, saying they would usually be attending services on Sunday morning but instead were hosting the conversation on the Capitol steps.
A crowd listens during a livestreamed conversation with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Sen. Cory Booker D-N.J., on the steps of the Capitol on Sunday.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP“Martin Luther King said, ‘Budgets are moral documents,’ and that’s the spirit we come here with this morning,” Booker said before he urged supporters to join the two men online or in person.The New Jersey senator called on supporters to “give your own testimony to your moral urgency that you feel, to maybe your faith traditions or moral traditions that ... motivate you at this moment to speak out, maybe share your story of what the threat of this bill does to you and your lives.”
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