After Backing Trump, Low-Income Voters Hope He Doesn’t Slash Their Benefits

The Washington Post

17:28 JST, December 28, 2024

NEW CASTLE, Pennsylvania – 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. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.

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, 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.”

Trump carried the Pennsylvania city of New Castle by about 400 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win here in nearly 70 years. More than 1 in 4 residents live in poverty, and the median income in this former steel and railroad hub ranks as one of the lowest in Pennsylvania.

New Castle’s poorest residents weren’t alone in putting their faith in Trump. Network exit polls suggest he erased the advantage Democrats had with low-income voters across the country.

Fifty percent of voters from families with an income of less than $50,000 a year cast their ballots for Trump, according to the data, compared with 48 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. Four years ago, President Joe Biden carried those voters by 11 percentage points; Hillary Clinton won them by 12 points in 2016 and former president Barack Obama by 22 points in 2012.

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. Trump’s pick for White House budget director was a key architect of Project 2025, a plan drawn up by conservatives to guide his second term that calls for steep cuts to programs such as food stamps. And GOP leaders in Congress and Trump advisers are considering significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal aid.

The uncertainty comes after last week’s high-stakes showdown in Congress over the federal funding bill. Lawmakers narrowly avoided a shutdown after agreeing to fund the government until March. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) had unveiled a bipartisan bill to put off a shutdown, but Trump and Musk railed against what they said was unnecessary spending in the initial package.

“Everybody is on hyperalert,” said Tom Scott, the chief executive officer of Lawrence County Community Action Partnership, a social service agency that helps New Castle residents. “You have to be concerned because you don’t know which programs could be targeted” for spending reductions.

In a recent appearance on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said any efforts by his administration to streamline the federal government would not impact entitlement programs such as Social Security.

“Americans of all backgrounds elected President Trump because of his plans to lower costs, end the financial drain of illegal immigrants on our healthcare system, and ensure that our country can continue to care for American citizens who rely on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security,” said Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for his transition team.

Some longtime Democrats like Mosura said they initially struggled over whether to vote for Trump. They had believed Democrats were the most likely to help the poor and disagreed with Republicans on issues like abortion. But Mosura said she kept coming back to the conclusion that Trump would put Americans like her first and improve her economic prospects.

Mosura said she has been unable to find full-time work in her field and is planning to change her party affiliation to Republican. But she also gets anxious when she hears GOP politicians talk about reducing government spending.

“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.”