A House Republican from Wisconsin cheered in a since-deleted post on X after Republicans managed to pass President Donald Trump's mega-spending bill, which takes away health care benefits for millions of Americans and leaves millions more with fewer public benefits they need to make ends meet.
Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), a former Navy Seal, retweeted a post from an account called Logical Luminary that claimed "17 million people just lost health care. 18 million kids just lost school meals. 3 million Americans just lost food assistance. And $3.5 trillion was added to the deficit. All for a tax cut for Trump’s billionaire donors."
"Yes!" Van Orden's since-deleted post read.
After deleting the post, Van Orden said that his comment was "supposed to be a response to a different text." He added that he meant to reply to White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt's post, which says "VICTORY!"
Van Orden also said the figures mentioned in the original post were "BS."
The most recent analysis of Trump's budget from the Congressional Budget Office says that the legislation will cause 11.8 million people to lose their Medicaid coverage. The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities added that it will reduce spending on food assistance by $267 billion between 2026 and 2034. Republicans have pushed back on these estimates, although they have offered scant evidence to support the claims that the estimates are untrue.
The CBO also estimates that Trump's budget will increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade.