"Please take care of us": Low-income Trump voters worry he'll cut benefits they rely on

From low-income voters who supported Donald Trump last month, a plea to the president-elect: don’t cut our benefits.

Trump has frequently made grand promises to protect Social Security, Medicare and other benefits. But with a growing list of billionaires on his cabinet, a vow to quell spending and a slim Republican coalition in Congress consisting of some anti-spending hawks, his voters aren’t so sure.

Pennsylvania Trump voter Lori Mosura described the billionaire as “more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich” in an interview with the Washington Post. She lives below the poverty line, receiving $1,200 a month in food stamps and Social Security benefits.

But she has a message for Trump.

“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” Mosura said, shifting the conversation as though she were speaking to Trump. “Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”

Trump has enlisted billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to plot massive government spending cuts, a feat which almost certainly requires cuts to Social Security and Medicare, experts say. Trump allies have signaled support for gutting the safety nets, which account for nearly half of the federal budget.

Some Trump voters who rely on benefits, like Steve Tillia, who receives $1900 in social security and food stamp payments, are more optimistic about cuts to the departments that help them make ends meet.

“It’s not cutting government programs, it’s cutting the amount of people needed to run a program,” Tillia told the Post. “They are cutting staff, which could actually increase the amount of the programs that we get.”

Meanwhile, local Republican officials are begging the incoming Trump administration to leave benefits alone. New Castle City Administrator Chris Frye told the Post he expected some benefits tweaks at a federal level, but hoped they wouldn’t be catastrophic.

“I think it would be stupid to just take something away… we would have mass chaos. Mass homelessness,” Frye told the Post. “Nationally, I don’t think it is going to be a situation where they are taking away from people.”