The Oregon Democrat on money for ICE, cuts to Medicaid and the new mood in DC.
Donald Trump mobilized a record-number of Americans across voting blocs in 2024. Now, Trump 2.0 appears to be galvanizing an equally impressive opposition. Constituent engagement with the congressional office of Rep. Suzanne Bonamici in the form of calls, emails and letters has increased two to threefold since the days of Joe Biden.
The longest-serving of Oregon’s six U.S. representatives, Bonamici — a Democrat serving Oregon’s first district — is also the only one in office during the first Trump administration. She says the experience prepared her for what she calls Trump’s absurd excesses. But she admits she wasn’t prepared for the extent of it.
Oregon Business interviewed the Congresswoman last week in her office in the Beaverton Round, where she discussed cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, increased funding for ICE and how constituents can manage burnout.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are your priorities now that Trump’s budget has passed?
Well, my priorities are to do what’s best for the people I represent in terms of making their future better and making their lives better.
One of the things I’ve said is that we’re not giving up on a lot of the issues that were put in the — I call it the Big, Bad, Ugly Bill because I don’t see anything beautiful about it.
Whether I’m out in the neighborhood or at the grocery store or in schools or communities, people are coming up to me and talking to me about how afraid they are. It’s a combination of the Medicaid cuts, the SNAP cuts, the ridiculous increase in funding for ICE. I don’t think ICE deserves another penny right now until they start following the law. But this is a massive increase in their budget.
And obviously I’m very much focused on turning things around next November, so we can have a check on this administration.
What’s the mood like in D.C.?
It’s pretty gloomy right now.
I’ve been there since the beginning of 2012. When I got to Congress, you couldn’t find a Republican who wasn’t a free-trade Republican. I represent a very trade-dependent district, and what I’m seeing now with the policies that the Republicans are putting forward —and not pushing back on — this chaotic tariff policy, for example. It’s almost shocking.
When I saw people who represent communities with high percentages of people on Medicaid vote for this bill and say it’ll get rid of waste, fraud and abuse — it shocks me. Because they know. They know there’s not close to $900 billion of waste, fraud and abuse. Nobody wants waste, fraud and abuse. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about taking health care away from people. And both times the House considered this reconciliation bill, they did it overnight — which kind of says something. Why pass this in the middle of the night? Are you so afraid of the public perception? Because the more people find out about the bill, the less they like it.
I hear from people [who voted for Trump] who thought their costs were going to go down and the wars were going to end. And now their health care’s at risk, and their neighbors are being deported — snatched off the street by people with masks. It’s just an incredibly dangerous situation.
The increase in the ICE budget was just devastating. Nobody wants criminal people, whether they be undocumented or not, in their communities. But that’s not what [ICE is] doing. A lot of people they’ve sent to detention or pulled off the street, they’re not criminals. They’re either asylum seekers or they may have some traffic infraction — they are not hardened criminals. [ICE is] so distracted with their quota that they’re not focusing on the fentanyl traffickers and the people they really should be focusing on. So it’s really tough. And I tell you, people are scared.
Joe Biden had an immigration bill that would have put resources toward ICE. Did you support that?
I didn’t support every bit of it, but had it come before me, I likely would have supported it. Because I’ve said since I got to Congress that we need comprehensive immigration reform. I get really frustrated when I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that people need to come here legally. Of course they do. And seeking asylum is legal. It’s legal to request asylum. But what’s happening right now is that the immigration judges — which, by the way, are not part of the judicial branch but part of the [Department of Justice] — they seem to just be dismissing cases, and then they immediately deport these people without giving them an opportunity to make their case. What we need to do is make it easier for people to come here and be contributing members of our community and our society.
Most people in this country have relatives who were immigrants, right? My grandparents came to Ellis Island. They came for the American dream. My grandpa became a citizen. He was hard-working.
And I think about the people I meet who are asylum seekers, and the desperate conditions they’re leaving, where their kids are threatened with murder or rape. And then they make the hard journey to come here to save their lives and contribute to our economy and our communities. You’d think that’s the kind of person we’d want to be a citizen.
Funding for SNAP is often debated around budget time, often in the context of the free rider problem and, like, people buying lobster with their food stamps and the like.
Oh yeah, that anecdote. It’s not a problem. I first heard that anecdote a long time ago, about how — oh my gosh! — people are buying lobster with SNAP. All of a sudden, everybody’s buying lobster with SNAP. It’s absurd.
Food insecurity is a real issue and we absolutely need to have that assistance for people. I was at a school yesterday, serving lunch to kids. A lot of these kids just don’t have enough to eat at home. And these programs, whether they’re summer meal programs or school nutrition programs, are essential. This bill gives a massive amount of benefit to those at the top and pennies to those who are still struggling. So a person might get an extra 68 cents a day — or whatever the calculation is — but they’re losing their health care and they’re losing SNAP benefits. That’s absurd.
Nobody wants waste, fraud or abuse in these programs. But that’s the reason why we had [Government Accountability Office] inspectors — auditors who could go through all these programs and recommend changes. But Trump fired all those people and put in DOGE, which I’m convinced is really just bad AI, because there’s no humanity behind these decisions, and some of them are so absurd.
You’re also concerned with cuts to programs for domestic violence victims. Why should the federal government pay for that?
Because we all do better when we all do better. And historically, those programs have had bipartisan support. There’s a Violence Against Women Act, and the Crime Victims Assistance Act. If someone is a victim of domestic violence and ends up on the street, that’s going to cost society more than getting them some services and getting them into a safe place so they can get back to work.
In looking at whether something’s a good investment, sometimes, like with early childhood education, it takes really long-term thinking. But this is a good investment to get these people the support they need to get back on their feet.
How do you contend with outrage fatigue or apathy in the electorate? Everything we’ve talked about is important. How do you get people to care about everything?
A few ways. Number one, I encourage people to stay in touch and to send me stories. Sometimes people say, “Oh, I know you already support Medicaid or SNAP or Planned Parenthood, for example, so I’m not going to email you.” And I say, “No, I want you to. I want you to keep in touch. I want you to send your stories.” Because I can go back to Washington, D.C. and say, “Look, I had 8,000 people email me about this issue. My constituents really care about this.”
Another thing I encourage people to do is join some sort of group — if it’s Indivisible or an environmental group or immigrant rights group, or a group connected to an issue that you care about. To have some sort of community.
Also, do something that brings you joy. Because we can’t all be worn-down all the time, which is one of the reasons I’m a huge supporter of arts and culture. Because not only is that important to our society, but it’s also important to have something to help you enjoy life. Arts and music are ways that people connect and learn about each other. And they’re very healing. They use art therapy for veterans with PTSD, for example. So get engaged in something that brings you some joy. Because part of what the administration is trying to do is wear people down. That’s what authoritarian governments do: They wear people down and get them to back off.
The other thing I’m doing is encouraging people to push back on misinformation and disinformation, because there’s so much of that. So if people hear someone say something like, for example, “I’m glad they’re defunding Planned Parenthood because I don’t support abortion,” you can remind people that there’s already a federal law that says that federal dollars can’t pay for abortions. So correct misinformation and disinformation, because it gives you something to do that’s positive.
Are there big-picture, structural fixes to our government you’d potentially support? I’m talking about, like, moving to a system of proportional representation in Congress. Stuff like that.
Oh, certainly. Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. It’s absurd that D.C. is not a state. And Puerto Rico should have rights as well. They have a representative, but their votes don’t count, right? So that’s absurd. It’s really absurd for D.C. I mean, they’re right there in the nation’s capital, and their voice doesn’t matter. That doesn’t make sense.
And I think there could definitely be some structural changes to how we protect our constitutional separation of powers. We passed some protections after the first Trump administration, with my former colleague, now-Sen. Adam Schiff leading the way. But it’s harder now with the Supreme Court immunity decision. I hope that at some point my colleagues in Congress understand that the more power they give to the executive branch, the more they’re just ceding their own power in the legislative branch.
And the same thing with Supreme Court reform. I used to be a little skeptical about it, because who’s going to adjudicate the wrongs of the Supreme Court? But we need to have more ethics and transparency around the Supreme Court in light of all the things that have been revealed in the last couple of years.
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