{"id":38791,"date":"2025-02-21T01:50:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T07:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38791"},"modified":"2025-02-21T01:50:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T07:50:55","slug":"georgia-republican-faces-town-hall-backlash-over-doges-chainsaw-approach-to-government-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38791","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Republican faces town hall backlash over DOGE’s ‘chainsaw approach’ to government cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rep. Rich McCormick<\/a> faced an angry crowd Thursday during a town hall in his Georgia district, where many constituents lashed out at the Republican lawmaker for his support of massive federal layoffs and budget cuts by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In video of the event taken by Greg Bluestein, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an NBC News contributor, attendees clashed with McCormick, bashing both President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk who is helping lead DOGE’s efforts to drastically reduce government spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one instance,\u2002<\/a>an attendee referred to recent cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by asking, \u201cWhy is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCormick responded that \u201ca lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 1,300 probationary CDC employees were removed from their posts as the Trump administration makes efforts to terminate all probationary workers\u2002<\/a>\u2014 typically employees who are recent hires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we continue to grow the size of government and we can\u2019t afford it, it\u2019s going to have shortfalls in your Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,\u201d McCormick added at the event in Roswell, about 20 miles from the CDC headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attendee shot back that the administration was taking a \u201cchainsaw approach\u201d<\/a> to dismissing its employees and the layoff effort was being \u201cjammed down the pipe, so rushed and sloppily.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After McCormick said that a department or agency makes its own decisions about who to cut from its workforce when given a directive about head count, people in the audience could be heard saying, \u201cNo!\u201d with one person saying, \u201cElon Musk is deciding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The town hall was also punctuated by constituents saying, \u201cwe\u2019re pissed,\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t bend over,\u201d as well as chants of \u201cshame!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As McCormick struggled to respond to the interruptions from the crowd and suggested he was offering solutions and people didn\u2019t \u201cwant to hear,\u201d one person can be heard shouting, \u201cWe want to work with someone better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCormick handily won re-election last year, winning 64.9%<\/a> of the vote in a state that Trump flipped after narrowly losing the battleground to President Joe Biden in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One person who raised budget concerns Thursday could be heard<\/a> telling McCormick that he had done a \u201cdisservice\u201d and had failed to \u201cstand up for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another instance,\u2002<\/a>an attendee asked McCormick how he plans to \u201crein in the megalomaniac in the White House\u201d following Trump\u2019s \u201cLONG LIVE THE KING\u201d<\/a> post on Truth Social, a question that was met by cheers and some people rising to their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you talk about tyranny, when you talk about presidential power, I remember having the same discussion with Republicans when Biden was elected,\u201d McCormick said, to boos from the attendees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see any president be too powerful,\u201d McCormick added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At different points during the town hall, McCormick made attempts to quiet the crowd, saying at one point, \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna yell at me, that\u2019s not going to be an effective town hall,” and later telling attendees, “Nobody can hear when you\u2019re yelling.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesperson for McCormick did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night on the town hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Rich McCormick faced an angry crowd Thursday during a town hall in his Georgia district, where many constituents lashed out at the Republican lawmaker for his support of massive federal layoffs and budget cuts by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. In video of the event taken by Greg Bluestein, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8193,2005,1564,1580,32150],"class_list":["post-38791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-budget-cuts","tag-georgia","tag-layoffs","tag-republicans","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38793,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38791\/revisions\/38793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}