Hickenlooper: Trump Cuts Will Bring Pain To Republicans Later

Sen. John Hickenlooper said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s broad cuts to federal programs will come to hurt farmers, veterans and food stamp recipients — and Republicans will come to regret it.

“If these cuts continue and suddenly farmers aren’t going to be able to get crop insurance, right, for their crops, that’s going to cripple small farmers way more than the big guys,” the moderate Colorado Democrat said at POLITICO Playbook’s First 100 Days breakfast series Tuesday.

“I guarantee you that will get connected to all these other cuts, and there will be a lot of people showing up at their Republican House member saying, ‘How can you support this?’” he added.

Hickenlooper also predicted that Trump’s moves to clamp down on clean energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act as part of his ”national energy emergency” would be counterproductive — and hurt the Republican districts benefiting most from the dollars.

”We are by far the largest producer of energy in the history of the world on a per capita level,” said Hickenlooper, a member of the Energy Committee. “But those things freezing so much of the Inflation Reduction Act is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”