Sacramento, CA – The County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA) of California issued the following statement from Executive Director Carlos Marquez III today on President Trump’s disastrous signature domestic legislation to extend tax breaks for billionaires, which cuts $1 trillion in Medicaid and other health programs and decimates the nation’s food assistance program:  

“County human services officials who devote their life’s work to keeping vulnerable families and individuals safe, healthy, housed, and fed are dismayed by the passage of H.R.1 and the overnight dismantling of California’s safety net as we know it. The human suffering and societal costs this legislation will wrought are nearly incalculable, except that Congress and the White House had full knowledge of its unconscionable impacts and chose to wage a war on the poor and working poor anyway – over 700,000 low-income Californians may go hungry, up to 3.4 million will now be at risk of losing their healthcare.”

“Counties will endeavor to continue our role as an indispensable backstop against unmitigated sickness and poverty, to ensure children have the nutrition and healthcare they need to go to school and parents to work, but we cannot weather this deeply uncertain moment alone. We stand ready to work with the Governor and Legislature to deliver on our mission now more than ever.”