Congressman Ro Khanna may represent a district in California, but he credits growing up in Bucks County for his success in life.
On a Sunday evening, Rep. Khanna, a Council Rock High School graduate, spoke to nearly 400 people in Levittown about the proposed $715 billion in Medicaid cuts, taxing billionaires (not giving them tax breaks), and the precarious state of our democracy.
Hosted locally by Indivisible Bucks County and Protect Our Care, the event was part of Khanna’s “Benefits Over Billionaires” tour making stops in Republican-held swing districts in lieu of their own representatives holding town halls, like Pennsylvania first Congressional district’s Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. Khanna was joined by Bucks County State Rep. Jim Prokopiak and State Senator Senator Sharif Street, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
“Town halls are a bedrock of democratic government,” said Laura Rose of Indivisible Bucks County. “Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has failed to hold a town hall since August of 2017, and that is a serious failure to fulfill the requirements of his job. The people of Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District deserve better. We are delighted that Congressman Ro Khanna, who grew up in our community, has agreed to fill the void that Rep. Fitzpatrick has left open all these years and take questions from our neighbors.”
Before his speech to kick off the event, Khanna asked both his former high school English teacher and U.S. History teacher to stand up for recognition.
“I believe in America because Bucks County believed in me. I believe in it because even as a son of immigrants, I had so many people who were there for me,” Khanna said.
In his speech Khanna frequently invoked his own phrase of “economic patriotism” to explain his vision for rebuilding our economy that revives our nation’s production and manufacturing prowess.
Combining this with the “work ethic of places in Pennsylvania,” Khanna said the country could build modern steel plants, aluminum plants, and invest in biotechnology research and development. He called for the creation of a national economic development council, investment in the skilled trades, and “AI academies everywhere,” and summed it up in a quote from NYT columnist David Brooks.
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“He said, ‘Donald Trump asks all the right questions. He just has all the wrong answers,’” Khanna said. “Why did we let 90,000 factories leave in this country? Why did we let steel get hollowed out? Why did we watch our industrial base just erode?”
Outside of his Allentown event two days ago, Khanna spoke to three Trump supporters who subsequently decided to sit in and hear him speak. Recently, Khanna has delved into major bipartisan legislation by announcing he would seek to codify Trump’s executive order targeting Big Pharma’s price gouging.
“I said America needs to work together to take on the Big Pharma industries that have billions of dollars of lobbying in Congress so that all of us are paying more for our drugs than people in every other country in the world,” Khanna said. “And these folks clapped.”
For the bulk of the event, Khanna fielded a plethora of questions from local residents, many sharing personal stories of how life has been for vulnerable loved ones since the Trump administration took office. Some were veterans or had veteran family members who rely on Medicaid, and even a Pennsbury School District 6th grader named Sophia, whose grandma who suffers from diabetes and asthma and is on Medicare, asked Khanna if the country is safe.
Khanna told the audience he has worked with Fitzpatrick on legislation and said he has spoken with his Republican colleague about the threat to Medicaid, urging him to oppose this. Fitzpatrick told him he doesn’t believe in Medicaid cuts, though he voted for a version of the budget resolution that does just that. In fact, according to the Center for American Progress, the budget would cut $1.31 billion in Medicaid and CHIP funding from Bucks County, along with reducing enrollment by 25,000 people. Moreso, the Congressional Budget Office says this budget will take health care away from more than 7.6 million Americans across the country.
“He said, ‘I don’t believe in Medicaid cuts’ so I said ‘well Brian we’ve got to get these cuts out of the bill then,’” Khanna said.
Khanna said instead of cutting Medicaid, Congress should raise taxes akin to Bill Clinton’s 1990’s economic policy, saying this could raise up to $5 trillion in revenue.
“We’re producing more wealth than we’ve ever produced in human history in districts like mine. You could either raise the taxes, or you could cut these social programs that so many Americans rely on,” Khanna said. “If the guy who represents the area that has all these billionaires is saying tax the billionaires more, how is this a hard vote for the 434 other members of Congress?”
Having co-chaired Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, Khanna is a proponent of Medicare for All. Addressing a question about strengthening Democrats’ Medicaid messaging, Khanna said there should not be more people denying health care than there are doctors, and agreed to the grim consequences of sweeping medicaid cuts.
“People are going to die. And especially people who are seniors who go to a senior center, a nursing facility. They run out of their own savings,” Khanna said. “So they go on Medicaid, and if Medicaid is cut, that’s often the death sentence for that senior.”
Nearly 10 percent of veterans are covered by Medicaid, while a recent ProPublica investigation showed how the proposed Medicaid cuts would severely harm veterans. This, combined with DOGE’s employee layoffs to the Department of Veteran Affairs, is a cause of concern for many people. With companies like Google, Apple, and Tesla in his district, Khanna said he has spoken to Elon Musk about his drastic cuts to the federal workforce, believing he could have actually been involved in policy in a productive way.
“There used to be a sense of service, even in Silicon Valley, a sense of patriotism. Money was important, but it wasn’t the highest end. The highest end was the contribution you made to the nation,” Khanna said. “It’s time for Silicon Valley to be in the service of America, not America to be in the service of Silicon Valley.”
Changing the messaging of the Democratic Party has been of chief concern, especially with the recent infighting of top party officials. Khanna placed emphasis on politicians who have been strongly advocating against the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans such as Senator Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders. He also called out the Democrats who don’t seem to be doing as much.
“About people who voted in Congress for the Laken Riley Act, which was basically saying that you can deport people without due process: that’s buying into the rhetoric that Donald Trump now is using to deport people without due process,” Khanna said. “Schumer, by capitulating and not getting a single concession, is creating a situation where Trump is actually in power to push forward.”
Many attendees with questions, both Democrats and Republicans, were concerned about the preservation of democracy under the Trump administration. With the infamous Qatari jet in mind, Khanna said there should not be politicians making decisions based on business interests, and neither should the president assume the power of the purse.
“That is not for the President to be unilaterally imposing tariffs, declaring it a national emergency,” Khanna said. “So Congress needs to reassert itself, and that needs to be part of our project when we get back to power.”
While the federal government deliberates a budget bill, Harrisburg is also currently in the midst of budget negotiations. State Rep. Prokopiak, who represents Falls Township, was also a featured speaker at the event. He said he wants people in his district to live their American dream. But they’re telling him their dreams are getting farther and farther away.
“If the federal government does what they say they will do, there is no way we can fill that gap,” Prokopiak said. “We’ll be forced to make very hard choices about things that have catastrophic consequences for working-class Americans and working-class Pennsylvanians and Bucks Countyians.”
