U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen is urging the public to call Republican lawmakers to protest proposed cuts to food aid and health insurance programs for lower income people.
During a stop at the Heartland Head Start early childhood program in Bloomington, Sorensen, a Democrat, said GOP lawmakers who voted for the President Trump-endorsed One Big Beautiful Bill Act need to hear about the stakes.
"Is it moral for us to be OK taking away funding for someone at a grocery store who is really struggling today? That's a question for our own morality. It's not about left or right. It's about what is right or wrong," said Sorensen.
Of the children at Heartland Head Start, 85% have parents who are on Medicaid. That’s 190 kids of the total program enrollment of 225 children, said Chuck Hartseil, Heartland's interim executive director. He said 134 children have parents who receive food assistance from the federal SNAP program.
Sorensen said proposed cuts to Medicaid and work requirements that make it difficult for low-income parents to keep their kids in Head Start need to be prevented.
Health and Human Services [HHS] Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he will not cut Head Start. Sorensen said he hopes that is the case. The administration, though, has decided to close several regional headquarters for Head Start, and HHS staff cuts and resignations are delaying the agency’s responses, risking destabilizing the effort because of federally created cash flow problems at local agencies.
“We're seeing that across the board, where their funding is being slowed. It's being slowed into municipalities that are trying to improve neighborhoods," said Sorensen. "The federal government, at the hands of Elon Musk and DOGE, is grinding to a halt. But it's grinding to a halt by design. This is their design to make things inoperable, because they want to make things inoperable so they can find ways to privatize the fix.
"And so it is my job in Congress to stand up against that, to make sure that we have a government that works for the people and by the people.”
Heartland Head Start’s $4 million budget is funded almost entirely by a federal grant, awarded every five years. The current grant ends this month.
Sorensen said he does not want the five-year funding for Head Start to be delayed.
“We have to make sure Heartland Head Start is able to survive. We do not want to have to see any letter go out to any parent to say that this goes away, because what does it mean for a parent who is taking those classes or working that second job to provide for their kids? It's going to affect the economy. It's going to affect the ability for us to take care of our neighbors. We need to make sure the funding it gets where it needs to,” said Sorensen.
Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation have recommended eliminating Head Start, labeling it ineffective and saying it provides only marginal benefits that are not worth taxpayer support.
“I think we need to respond to the fact that our current president said that he didn't know anything about Project 2025. If he didn't know anything about Project 2025 then we don't need to make a cut," Sorensen scoffed.
“Anybody in Washington who thinks that it's a good idea to make a cut to Head Start, obviously has never seen one in action. I've been at Head Starts across this district ... and it works. There are testimonials to show that this works, and there are also the testimonials to show that the cost of not doing this is so high on our communities. This is a way to lift people out of poverty. This is a way to get the crime rate down in our communities, in our neighborhoods, by taking care of kids,” said Sorensen.
What's next
Sorensen said he has hope the Senate will block cuts detailed in the One Big Beautiful Bill and a promised House measure this week that would legitimize recissions of $9 billion in previously congressionally-approved money made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to foreign aid programs.
The recissions bill also would give a green light to Trump’s executive order clawing back money for PBS and NPR approved for the next two years. NPR and PBS have sued the administration, calling the executive order unconstitutional.
Sorensen said he thinks opponents of the measure have been effective in their communication.
“We need to make sure that we're doing the work of the people. And I heard that loud and clear. We're hearing more of our constituents and our neighbors that are speaking up about what our values are, and I think the senators are hearing that too … Maybe I'm optimistic," he said.
"Maybe I'm putting too much faith in the American people speaking up, but I don't think that this is going to make it to the president's desk, and I don't think that they're going to be able to make these cuts that are going to hurt our neighbors.”
Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, defend budget cuts in general, if not specific ones, citing the huge budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in 2024, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimated the deficit at 5.66% of the gross domestic product [GDP] and that under current trends the deficit will rise to $2.6 trillion and 6.1% of GDP by 2034.
“I'm all for finding ways that we can have accountability for taxpayer dollars, but just making brash cuts like this in one bill, one bill that is not bipartisan, one bill that the CBO can't even score until the day that we are voting on it. That's not how we should be doing this,” said Sorensen. “And certainly now you're seeing House Republicans that have cold feet, that are now coming out and saying, I didn't read the bill.”
Both major political parties tend to criticize the opposite party when it is in power for rushing legislation through without adequate deliberation to determine what measures the bills contain.
