Democrats criticized a Republican congressman for seeming to gloat about the negative effects of the GOP’s recently-passed budget megabill.
In a since-deleted post on X, Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden wrote an emphatic “YES!” in response to a post reading that the legislation meant that “17 million people just lost health care,” “18 million kids just lost school meals,” and “3 million Americans just lost food assistance.”
Van Orden later said his post was intended as a response to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrating the bill’s passage. But many still called him out.
“You need to understand these people know exactly how badly they are hurting people and they love it,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X. “It’s sick.”
“Republican Congressman CELEBRATING the theft of your health care to fund billionaires’ tax cuts,” California Rep. Eric Swalwell reacted.
Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat running to unseat Van Orden in next year’s midterms, called his post a “big mask off moment.”
The legislation, which President Donald Trump heralded as the “beginning of our new Golden Age,“ would endanger the free meal programs of at least 18 million students, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute, a public policy think tank. Nonpartisan experts said the bill would also leave at least 17 million Americans without health insurance, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that three million Americans wouldn’t qualify for food stamps or SNAP benefits.
Van Orden, who called those findings “BS,” was one of several Republicans who took issue with some elements of the bill but nevertheless supported it when summoned to vote on Thursday. Only two of the House’s 220 Republicans voted against it.
First elected to Congress in 2022 after a failed bid two years earlier, Van Orden is no stranger to controversy. As the Daily Beast reported, he was a trespasser on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 who used campaign funds to pay for his trip to Washington, D.C. that day.
Van Orden also drew heat from both sides of the aisle during the last Congress after he unleashed a profane tirade at Senate pages.
In June of 2021, a page at a Wisconsin library claimed Van Orden threatened her over a gay pride display. The congressman demanded to know who set it up in order to “teach them a lesson,” the page said. Interestingly, she added that Van Orden ultimately checked out all the books in the pride display except one, which was already being read.
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