| While hardworking New Mexicans are facing rising gas prices, health care premiums, and grocery costs, Congressman Gabe Vasquez is fighting to make their lives more affordable.
In a new op-ed, Vasquez details how MAGA Republicans in Washington are more focused on giving ICE blank checks and spending $1 billion per day on the war in Iran than addressing the affordability issues that everyday Americans are facing. In office, Vasquez is taking decisive action: investing in New Mexico and lowering costs for families with his Affordability Agenda that puts working people – not the wealthy elite – first.
“As your Congressman representing New Mexico’s 2nd district, I spend countless hours traveling across our vast state…And when I meet with folks, one thing is crystal clear: Hardworking New Mexicans are sick of billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted while they struggle to make a living and take care of their health.” – Rep. Vasquez.
Read more from Rep. Vasquez:
Albuquerque Journal: OPINION: MAGA spending spree leaves middle class in the dust
- Hundreds of millions of dollars for a ballroom with Italian marble floors to entertain the rich. A $70 million dollar luxury jet. A massive tax giveaway for billionaires, negotiated at a Florida golf course. And a $75 billion dollar slush fund for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to profile, detain and deport Hispanic people, the vast majority of whom have no criminal records.
- This is a snapshot of what the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans have chosen to spend your tax dollars on.
- Meanwhile, New Mexicans’ household budgets are stretched to the brink, driven by skyrocketing gas prices, rising utility costs, increasing rent and doubling health care premiums.
- To add insult to injury, out-of-control MAGA spending will increase the national debt by over $4 trillion in the next 10 years.
- Last summer, congressional Republicans passed…the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which sent health care and food prices skyrocketing, while wealthy elites got the biggest tax break in history.
- As your congressman representing New Mexico’s 2nd district, I spend countless hours traveling across our vast state, meeting with families, local leaders and businesses in communities such as Carlsbad, the South Valley, Alamogordo, Lordsburg and Chaparral. And when I meet with folks, one thing is crystal clear: Hardworking New Mexicans are sick of billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted while they struggle to make a living and take care of their health.
- I recently visited Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, to see firsthand how ICE is spending the $75 billion slush fund that MAGA Republicans granted it from working Americans’ paychecks. ICE is spending that money to lock up grandfathers and gardeners (the vast majority of whom have no criminal record), separating Hispanic people from their families, and building a makeshift prison in the desert, where three detainees have already died — none of which eases the burden of a worsening economy.
- Farmers can’t find workers. Rural hospitals are at the brink of closing. Behavioral health services are in high demand and low supply. Aging infrastructure plagues small cities and rural counties. The price of gas limits trips and increases the cost of doing business. All because of where MAGA has chosen to spend your taxpayer dollars.
- Piling onto the reckless spending in the Republican tax law, the president has also requested a monumental defense budget increase to help pay for his failed war in Iran. Instead of the $1 billion per day we’re spending to put our troops in harm’s way, New Mexicans want investments in roads and schools, a fair shot at decent pay for a hard day’s work, tax relief and the ability to make a living and provide their families with a decent quality of life.
- To pay for this massive spending, MAGA Republicans have drastically cut food stamps, destroyed Medicaid, taken away health care tax credits and fired hundreds of thousands of government employees, all the while allowing billionaires to profit from new, unregulated industries like prediction markets and sweetheart government contracts.
- Don’t take my word for it, the president said it himself: We cannot pay for Medicare, Medicaid and child care because we have to pay for his war.
- This kind of frivolous, out-of-touch spending is not inevitable, it’s a choice — the wrong one.
- As one of the few remaining members of Congress who is willing to work across the aisle to get common sense work done, I’ve been working hard with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to end this war, make smart investments in border security and pass my Affordability Agenda, a concrete plan to bring down the cost of your housing, health care, utility bills, child and elder care and food.
- And as someone who hasn’t used my position in Congress to get rich and has watched countless politicians put the interests of their donors over the needs of the people who sent them to Washington, I can tell you this: Rich Washington, D.C., elites and leaders from both parties want people who actually work for a living to think that these issues are complicated, perhaps even unsolvable.
- But it’s honest-to-God quite simple: We can make smart investments to bring down our cost of living, improve public safety and ensure America remains the world’s leading superpower for generations to come. MAGA Republicans and elites are just choosing not to. And it’s got to stop.
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