'As un-American as you can get': South Carolina reporter slams Republican lawmaker

South Carolina reporter Matthew Hall called out Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) for describing Americans who oppose President Donald Trump’s controversial budget bill as “against America.”

“That’s a whole lot of un-Americans,” writes Hall, noting polls showing low support for the bill across the nation.

Hall resents Mace purporting to be the American who gets to decide what the rest of America stands for.

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“… [I]t’s one thing to characterize legislation as good or bad for the American people and let the public debate it — and it’s quite another to characterize the American people as good or bad,” wrote Hall. “Saying ‘If you’re against this bill, you’re against America’ is as un-American as you can get.”

What is American, says Hall, is “thoughtful debate” and the “disappearing art of civil political disagreements,” which he says “have helped make and keep America great for nearly 250 years.”

Trump’s budget bill, for example, is still very much under debate.

“It’s clearly one of the largest transfers of wealth in U.S. history,” said Hall. “The Yale University Budget Lab crunched the numbers to determine that the final version of the bill will decrease the average income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans by $700 a year and increase it $5,700 a year for the richest 20 percent of Americans and more for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans — about $30,000 a year.”

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Hall added that the bill does this by “cutting Medicaid and food stamp benefits to millions of Americans who have relied on them,” while Trump promises that his tariffs will offset these cuts by boosting the U.S. economy. The only real boost laid out by accountants, however, is the boost to the nation’s federal deficit, to which Trump’s budget adds roughly $4 trillion over 10 years.

“The bill does so much its impact is unknowable at this stage,” writes Hall. “It could be Trump is the dealmaker he purports to be and America emerges stronger than ever. It could also be Trump betrayed the middle class that elected him to fix its economic pain by making its life harder for generations.”

Hall assures that he is “not here to say whether you should be for or against this bill.” But he does say your opinion on a spotty, controversial budget carrying long-term impacts does not affect your citizenship.

“I am here to tell you that if you’re against the bill you remain American,” he said.

Read the full State report at this link.