March 13, 2025 10:52 AM UTC

Jeff Hurd Gives Very Bad Answers To Tele Town Hall Audience

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• by: Colorado Pols

We wrote yesterday about freshman GOP Rep. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd’s switch from in-person meetings with constituents to telephone town halls, following an incident last month in which Hurd’s Southwest regional staffer fled the scene of a library town hall after blanching at the size of the gathered crowd. On Tuesday evening, Rep. Hurd conducted a telephone town hall with constituents that the Grand Junction Sentinel reported on yesterday–and in Hurd’s answers to hard questions about impending cuts to Medicaid and federal mass layoffs, we can see why Republican leadership is telling their vulnerable members to avoid public interactions of any kind including via phone.

Of all the subjects Hurd addressed, the closest Hurd came to outright criticizing the Trump administration came in response to a question about Ukraine:

“In my view, pausing military aid to Ukraine weakens our hand, it emboldens Russia and it invites greater danger down the road from countries like China who are watching what’s happening here,” Hurd said. “In my view, it’s important that we do not align ourselves with Russia. I think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of war, I believe Vladimir Putin is a dictator and that Russia and Putin are indisputably adversaries of America. It is dishonorable and wrong not to stand up against the tyranny of Putin.”

From that relatively strong moment, though, things went downhill as Hurd tried to minimize the damage being done from the mass layoff of federal workers:

[Hurd] said he’s “in communication with the White House, local leadership, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture” to ensure that the cuts made to those services remove bloat without removing the people who matter most. He said he wants to protect public lands and ensure they’re available for future generations.

“It’s not the land managers on the ground in western and southern Colorado who should be cut … It should be the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., that are seeing their ranks trimmed,” Hurd said [Pols emphasis] before elaborating on legislation he’s introduced to bring back fired staffers.

This was, to put it mildly, a terrible answer for residents of CO-03 who have seen with their own eyes the effects of layoffs of locally-based federal employees–and not the “bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” everybody loves to hate, but the junior probationary workers who are actually losing their jobs in Colorado. Hurd’s legislation to preserve some of the benefits of seniority for fired workers who are later rehired is an acknowledgement that some of these terminations are wrong, but Hurd can’t admit that openly without risking the wrath of the ever-vigilant Trump media machine.

And when the subject turned to Medicaid, which thousands of residents of Rep. Hurd’s district depend on, Hurd’s answers got even worse:

In February, Hurd voted for a budget restructuring bill that tasks the government with cutting $2 trillion in costs over the next decade — and tasks the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handles Medicaid policy, with finding $880 billion in cuts.

Hurd was asked if he supports any cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. He said that he’s committed to protecting Medicaid for those who need it most — “the working poor, mothers, pregnant women, children” — but he also thinks Medicaid dollars can be used more effectively, saying that expansion of the Affordable Care Act caused Medicaid spending to “explode.”

On the campaign trail last year, Hurd promised to “expand healthcare access for rural Colorado” (image above right). But in office, Hurd voted for a budget resolution that will require massive cuts to Medicaid resulting in an estimated 58,000 residents of Hurd’s district losing their Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage. That huge reduction in coverage is expected to strain rural hospitals and other care providers to and perhaps past their financial breaking point.

There’s no sugar coating it. Hurd’s first big vote in Congress was to break his campaign promise to “expand healthcare access for rural Colorado.”

“I know it’s very important to the 3rd Congressional District, since I believe about 30% of my constituents receive some sort of Medicaid assistance.”

Just like with Hurd’s fellow freshman Rep. Gabe Evans, the vote in favor of the GOP’s budget resolution calling for historic cuts to the nation’s social safety nets was a watershed moment that renders all of these platitudes about “expanding healthcare access” and “protecting Medicaid for those who need it most” 100% false. It doesn’t matter how many times Hurd and Evans say they want to “protect Medicaid,” their vote in favor of massive cuts to Medicaid is all that matters.

At a moment when rural Colorado needed the better leadership they were promised, Jeff Hurd wasn’t.