by Yucheng Tang & Leslie Layton
posted March 25
More than 200 people attended a weekly protest near 1st District Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s Chico office on March 21, demanding in-person town halls that haven’t taken place since 2017 and urging the Republican congressman to defend federal programs threatened with huge funding cutbacks.
The turnout was more than twice that of the protest a week earlier. Some passing cars honked in response to show support. There were few young people participating in what has been dubbed in some social media posts as the #FindLaMalfa protest, and has been organized by a coalition of activists from several groups.
(LaMalfa has since announced a “telephone town hall” to be held at 6 p.m. March 26. His office has told reporters that a phone conversation with the congressman will be open to registered voters with valid phone numbers in Butte, Glenn, Yuba, Sutter and Colusa counties, but there will be no call-in.)
Lyndall Ellingson, 66, a retired public health professor at Chico State, joined the protest to “demand that our elected representative Doug LaMalfa have a town hall [and] listen to his constituents about defending Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”
The Social Security Administration has said it will close some regional offices, cut positions and eliminate a system that allowed beneficiaries and applicants the chance to prove their identity by phone. As of March 31, it will be necessary to apply online or report to a local office.
In a March 23 interview with Chico’s Enterprise-Record, the congressman addressed reports there will be cuts to services and/or benefits. “It’s all nonsense,” he told the ER.
“…there is no Medicaid cuts. There is no Social Security cuts. There is no cuts to the VA system; the employee stuff, we’ve still got more work to do with that.”
But Ellingson said that although the funding for Social Security benefits has not yet been touched, the infrastructure that makes it possible for many recipients to apply and receive guidance is being undermined.
“They’ve shut down phone service, so people can no longer talk to a phone representative at Social Security about their benefits,” Ellingson said. “So that means if you can’t get through online — it could be your system, it could be your weak WiFi, it could be that you’re an elder and you’re not very digitally skilled — you have to actually go into an office — but they’re closing down the offices.”
Possible cuts to Medicaid worrisome
Ellingson also mentioned the controversial budget resolution recently passed by the House with LaMalfa’s vote in favor. It includes a proposed $880-billion cut in spending over the next 10 years.
Such a deep cut to spending by the committee that oversees Medicaid, analysts say, would impact that program, which provides health insurance to disabled and low-income people. In California, that program is known as Medi-Cal and covers more than one-third of the state’s population.
In a statement on his website, LaMalfa says: “This budget resolution is a critical step toward restoring fiscal responsibility and reining in Washington’s out-of-control spending.”
“The magnitude of the cuts is just extraordinary, and nothing in American history has been remotely this size,” said Stan Dorn, director of the Health Policy Project at UnidosUS, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, at a briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services. “The closest previous cut … in 1981 … resulted in a 13% drop in Medicaid enrollment, and that would translate into a 9 million person loss today.”
Dorn said people of all races and ethnicities will be at risk, but “communities of color are especially vulnerable.” Over 20 million Latinos and 13 million African Americans have Medicaid as their source of health insurance today, he said.
“That includes almost 60% of all Black children, and more than one-third of all African American adults aged 65 and older. So these are folks who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care. And if Medicaid gets cut, where will they be?”
Ellingson, the public health professor, said low-income groups in general are more vulnerable and susceptible to these kinds of federal funding cuts. The 1st congressional district has a poverty rate of slightly more than 15 percent.
Chico VA workers on edge
Reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans major staff cutbacks — AP reports that an internal memo discusses plans to cut some 80,000 positions — have staff on edge in Chico.
“Everybody’s on pins and needles — even our leadership,” a local VA staffer, who asked not to be identified, told ChicoSol in a telephone interview. The staffer said she is less than two years from retirement and didn’t want to jeopardize her position by being identified in a news story. “We’re all pretty stressed out, and we all work beyond 40 hours a week.”
Some VA staffers working remotely have been ordered to return working at their workplaces by May 5, she said, but the Chico locale is already short on office space. They’ve been asked to send weekly emails explaining what they’ve accomplished. Some are “wondering if it’s worth working for the federal government,” she said.
“I believe we do really good work,” she said, “and people who don’t wash out, they don’t last. All of us are worried about our veterans, and we deal with many high-risk veterans.”
At Friday’s protest, Chico’s Margret Valdes, 56, focused on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“I’m deeply upset and saddened and angry about the sweeping attack against our federal agencies in terms of all of the layoffs and firings and quote unquote reduction,” Valdes said.
“If we’re saving money, if we’re supposedly taking bloat out of the government, then we should be able to see an itemized tally list as to where these monies are going to be going and what services that they would be providing for the citizens.”
Valdes said her 88-year-old mother is not capable of getting on the internet to “figure out Social Security.” Instead, she wants to make a phone call to someone or visit the office to ask relevant questions. “When they start shutting down the infrastructure that would allow these services to flow effectively, then it’s effectively cutting Social Security,” Valdes said.
Valdes hopes LaMalfa can address issues “that are going to make an everyday impact on people’s lives.”
“That is why we would need a town hall so that we could voice our concerns,” Valdes said. “As we’ve seen in town halls across the country, when representatives have to face listening to what people really have to say, it’s pretty undeniable that what they’re trying to purport is the truth, or not.”
ChicoSol reached out to LaMalfa’s office for comment on whether an in-person town hall is in the works, and for a response to protesters, but the congressman couldn’t be reached by deadline.
Protest organizers say they’ll continue to congregate between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. every Friday near LaMalfa’s Chico office at 20 Independence Circle.
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News Fellow reporting for ChicoSol. Leslie Layton is editor.