By TIM ROWDEN
Editor-in-Chief

East Alton, IL – When Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) spoke at the Madison County Federation of Labor’s 36th Annual Labor Awards Banquet March 27 she used the occasion to call out the drastic cuts to government agencies made by the Trump administration, and the lesson for Democrats in last November’s election.

“The Democratic Party as a whole I really feel like we have a wakeup call after this November election,” Budzinski said. 

“And the wakeup call to me is that we have to get back to the roots of our party, which is about working men and women and the struggle that I refer to as the waking up in the middle-of-the-night issues, wondering how am I going to pay my Ameren bill, how am I going to make the decision tomorrow to put gas in my tank or buy my week’s worth of groceries for my kids. Those are the issues that people really care about. Somewhere along the line I think the Democrats lost their way on some of these issues, and we need to find our way back.

“We will,” she said, “because we are the party of working people, we are the party that believes in taking care of our most vulnerable. We believe in taking care of our communities, of investing in our communities, not laying off the federal workforce that provide us with assistance to make sure people get access to their Social Security. That people have access to Medicaid.

“I’m here to say, I’m fighting for the issues, but we are really under attack,” Budzinski said. “In a large part our current president, Donald Trump, successfully sold a bill of goods to working people who were really desperate to believe that he had a path forward for them, and he was selling a bunch of snake oil that was not real.”

Budzinski pointed out Trump’s campaign promises to lower the price of groceries, eggs and other everyday goods.

“Can you even find a carton of eggs in the grocery store these days?” she asked, to which one woman in the crowd answered “Seven dollars!”

GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY?
Trump also has taken a chainsaw to the federal government through Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including laying off federal workers, cancelling their collective bargaining rights and working to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

“I want to say to a room full of my union brothers and sisters what this administration is trying to do to the United States Postal Service,” Budzinski said. “We rely on the Postal Service because folks get their prescription drugs, you get your Social Security check, you get your paycheck through the mail. They want to bundle it into the Department of Commerce to privatize it and put it into FedEx and UPS to control and take away the good middle-class union jobs with pensions the Postal Service provides.

VETERANS AFFAIRS
Budzinski who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, also called out the Trump administrations’ cuts to the federal workforce in the Veterans Administration (VA), while taking time to thank the veterans in the room for their service.

“You deserve better than a VA that is hollowed out and has received layoff after layoff,” she said , noting that when a federal judge ordered 2,400 workers fired VA workers reinstated, the Trump administration responded by putting them on administrative leave.

“These folks are now at home being paid but can’t work,” Budzinski said. “How is this efficient?

“I am for looking for government efficiency. We need to look and how we spend our money and if we’re spending too much. But you cannot take a chainsaw to the federal government, you take a scalpel and you’re thoughtful and smart and strategic, because these are not just numbers, these are people’s lives, these are our communities. We have to fight to get that. That has been my priority, fighting for the VA, fighting for our Postal Service, fighting for the Department of Education.”

PROUD TO REPRESENT MADISON COUNTY
On local issues, Budzinski said she is proud to represent Madison County and the working people who live and work there.

“I’m every day all damn day long proud to stand with the United Steelworkers in Granite City,” she said.

Budzinski was present March 3 for the groundbreaking of Wieland North America’s modernized East Alton facility, a project she was involved in advocating for with the Machinists’ union.

The $500 million modernization project will allow Wieland to retain 800 jobs throughout Illinois, enabling the company to increase production of critical copper and copper alloy components that are used in electric vehicles (EVs), EV charging infrastructure, and renewable energy production while supporting the state’s clean energy economy.

The project is supported by a $5 million congressionally-directed Community Project Funding award and a Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois (REV Illinois) agreement.

“That’s what we really want in our community,” Budzinski said. “We want good jobs. We want good union jobs. We want our companies to stay and invest in our communities. To be a part of that is really what I consider to be the heart of what I try to do every single day for us in Congress.”