Dems say their increasingly 'frustrated' base is mobilized in the fight against Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'

Fox News

09-07-2025

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The all-Democrat congressional delegation in swing state New Hampshire is teaming up to target President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" that he signed into law.
"The big beautiful betrayal of the American people" is how longtime Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the dean of the delegation, described the sweeping Republican-crafted domestic policy package.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., charged that the tax cuts and spending measure, which passed the House and Senate last week by razor-thin margins along nearly party-line votes in the GOP-controlled chambers, was "immoral, irrational, and impractical."
Rep. Chris Pappas, who's running in next year's midterm elections in the race to succeed the retiring Shaheen, argued that the bill is "a disaster for the American people."
First-term Rep. Maggie Goodlander claimed that "this bill is going to jack up the cost of living for tens of thousands of people across this state."
The new law is stuffed full of Trump's 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit. It includes extending his signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
The measure also provides billions for border security and codifies the president's controversial immigration crackdown.
However, the $3.4 trillion legislative package is also projected to surge the national debt by $4 trillion over the next decade.
Additionally, the legislation also restructures Medicaid – the nearly 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans.
The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation's major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump's tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage.
For weeks, Democrats have been blasting Republicans over the Medicaid and social safety net cuts.
"This is a big bill, and it's got a lot of really big provisions that are going to cause even more pain to people in our state who are already struggling with the high cost of living," Goodlander said in a Fox News Digital interview.
She charged that "it includes the biggest cuts to health care in American history" in order "to pay for another big tax cut for people who don't need it."
The delegation teamed up on Tuesday in New Hampshire's largest city at Waypoint, which notes that it's the state's longest-running home and community-based care charitable organization. Waypoint officials noted that roughly three-quarters of the people they service are on Medicaid.
Hassan said voters in New Hampshire are "mobilized" against the measure.
"The calls are coming in overwhelmingly against this bill to our offices," the senator said. "The outreach to our office has come from people from all political perspectives, people who self-identify as a Republican or a Trump voter or an independent or a Democrat."
However, with Republicans in control of the White House, the House and the Senate, congressional Democrats have little power or leverage to fight Trump's second-term agenda.
That is increasingly frustrating the Democrats' base.
"I don't know if fighting dirty is the term, but certainly people are getting frustrated," a New Hampshire-based progressive activist told Fox News Digital.
The activist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, urged the state's all Democrat congressional delegation to "introduce a thousand floor amendments, throw sand in the gears, do something, be more outspoken."
Another Granite State-based activist, who also asked for anonymity, said that many progressives feel they "are not being serviced by the current Democratic Party."
"There is no hope for these people unless we see candidates emerge in primaries that represent universal free healthcare and the other slate of issues that people associate with Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns," the activist said.
Republicans have blasted Democrats for voting against the measure, as they spotlight the tax cuts in the package. The New Hampshire Republican Party has targeted the delegation, and Pappas in particular, for their votes.
"New Hampshire liberal Chris Pappas just voted for the largest tax hike in American history," the state party charged in a social media post.
However, Pappas told Fox News last week that "I support targeted tax cuts for working people, for our small businesses and to make sure we are targeting that relief to the people that need it, not to billionaires, to the biggest corporations."
A memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), released minutes after the final House passage of the bill last Thursday, argued that "every Democrat voted to hurt working families and to protect the status quo."
The NRCC, which is the campaign arm of the House GOP, emphasized that "House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026."
That is fine with congressional Democrats, who aim to win back the House majority next year.
Goodlander, who is up for a second two-year congressional term in next year's midterms, told Fox News "the bottom line is this bill is definitely going to be on the ballot in 2026, and it's going to be a central focus of the work I'm doing, because the crisis that we're up against is a cost crisis, and this bill is going to jack up costs across the board."