Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Wednesday voted for a bill put forward by House Republicans that raises the debt ceiling, cuts spending, and repeals key elements of President Biden’s agenda.
“The bill that passed the House yesterday is the Congresswoman’s position on the debt ceiling,” Boebert’s press secretary Jake Settle told the Colorado Times Recorder in an email on Thursday.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the final version of the House bill included a number of provisions that were also featured in a House Freedom Caucus proposal unveiled last month.
Boebert, a Republican and a member of the caucus, supported those measures, which included stricter work requirements for welfare programs, blocking Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, and repealing renewable energy tax credits.
The Republican-controlled House passed the bill by a narrow 217-215 margin; only four Republicans, including Colorado’s Ken Buck (R-CO), voted against the legislation, while all Democrats opposed the measure.
Even though the bill does not include spending cuts to Social Security or Medicare, recipients of other government benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — formerly known as food stamps — and Medicaid, could be affected by expanded work requirements.
SNAP recipients under the age of 50 without any disabilities or dependents are currently required to spend 20 hours a week in work-related activities, or risk losing their benefits. Under the House GOP bill, this requirement would be expanded to those ages 50-55. A similar requirement of 80 hours per month would be applied to Medicaid recipients.
Boebert earlier this year voiced her support for more stringent work requirement measures, in particular when it comes to Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage to low-income families.
“There’s talk of work requirements for Medicaid, I’m for that all the way. There’s a lot of fraud, waste and abuse that is tied to that,” she said in an interview with RSBN.
She was also one of five House Republicans who urged the White House in January to enact work requirements as a feature of welfare reform. “Work requirements for able-bodied adults promote community engagement and a transition to self-sufficiency,” the Republican members of Congress wrote.
Republican interest in attaching work requirements to government entitlement programs is nothing new. But their effectiveness remains unclear. A study looking at the impact of the Medicaid work-requirement program in Arkansas, which became the only state to implement the requirements in June 2018, showed that it did not lead to an increase in employment. Researchers, however, point out that the evidence is limited as the requirement was only in place for several months.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the House bill “dead on arrival.” The White House has also rejected the measure. Republicans hope this bill will spark negotiations to avoid a debt default, which could lead to an economic crisis that puts millions of jobs at risk.
Boebert’s team did not reply to a request for comment about what compromises the congresswoman would be willing to make to avoid such a scenario.
But given her previous comments on the U.S. welfare system, it appears keeping the status quo is a non-starter.
“We’re here to tell government: we don’t want your benefits, we don’t want your welfare,” Boebert said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas in 2021.
