“Andy Harris Just Made the Most Dangerous Vote of His Career”

Shore Progress, Progessive Maryland, Progressive Harford Co • July 15, 2025

Marylanders will not forget this vote.


The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Republican budget bill, which slashes Medicaid, strips healthcare from millions, and transfers billions of our taxpayer dollars to the wealthiest people and corporations in America.


Shore Progress, Progressive Maryland, and Progressive Harford County issued the following statement in response. 


Andy Harris just made the most dangerous vote of his career. Instead of standing up for the families of Maryland’s 1st District, he stood by and let one of the most violent, greedy budget bills in modern history pass. He didn’t protect his constituents. He rewarded Trump and the billionaires.


This bill rips healthcare away from 17 million people, guts Medicaid, and robs Maryland of billions in critical federal funding. 


On the Eastern Shore alone, 150,000 Medicaid recipients, 68,000 people who rely on food assistance, and 316,400 children who depend on SNAP are all at risk of losing the vital safety net that keeps them out of extreme poverty.


It means more sick kids, more uninsured seniors, and more working families pushed to the brink. It means our state will be forced to cut back on the programs and institutions that our communities rely on, such as housing, food assistance, schools, and hospitals.


Let’s be clear about what this bill truly is: a massive wealth transfer from working people to the ultra-rich. 


While Marylanders fight to make ends meet, MAGA Republicans gave tax breaks to billionaires, oil companies, and corporate CEOs. They turned their backs on us and voted to make the rich richer, while the rest of us are left to suffer. 


This budget reconciliation shows us what the Republicans and Andy Harris value most, and it’s not us. It’s cruel and will kill people. It will make us less safe, secure, and healthy.


Marylanders will not forget this vote. We won’t forget that Andy Harris helped push this through by voting 'present' last time. And we won’t forget that when it came time to fix his mistake, he doubled down and ignored the people in his district who need Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and access to hospitals and nursing homes.


But here’s what they forgot: we’re still here. We’re still organizing. And we’re going to turn our anger into action.


Common Sense for the Eastern Shore

Protest against Trumpcare, 2017
By Jan Plotczyk July 9, 2025
More than 30,000 of our neighbors in Maryland’s first congressional district will lose their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid because of provisions in the GOP’s heartless tax cut and spending bill passed last week.
Farm in Dorchester Co.
By Michael Chameides, Barn Raiser May 21, 2025
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
By Catlin Nchako, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities May 21, 2025
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
By Jan Plotczyk May 21, 2025
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
By Jared Schablein, Shore Progress May 13, 2025
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
By Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury May 12, 2025
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
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