At a town hall in Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst delivered a comment that instantly ricocheted across social media and news outlets for its cold, almost nihilistic bluntness.
When confronted by constituents concerned about proposed Republican cuts to Medicaid and SNAP—programs that serve as lifelines for millions—one audience member warned, "People will die." Ernst’s reply?
“Well, we all are going to die.”
That was it. No clarification, no follow-up, no attempt to grapple with the real consequences of slashing essential services. Just a shrug cloaked in fatalism.
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This wasn’t a policy rebuttal. It was a dismissal of human suffering.
The Politics of Indifference
Ernst's comment may seem offhanded, but it’s disturbingly consistent with a broader GOP approach to social welfare: a mix of austerity, detachment, and moralizing. Programs like Medicaid and SNAP are not abstract line items; they are life-saving supports for people who can’t afford health care, who live in food deserts, who are disabled, elderly, or just broke.
To tell a room full of concerned citizens that “we’re all going to die” is to erase the urgency of preventable suffering and death. It reframes a moral debate as a cosmic inevitability—when the point being made was precisely that death doesn’t have to be the outcome.
The Human Cost
Let’s be clear: Medicaid cuts can mean skipped cancer treatments, unfilled insulin prescriptions, delayed surgeries. SNAP cuts mean children going to school hungry, seniors skipping meals to afford rent. These are not hypothetical harms—they are measurable, documented, and very real.
To respond with “we’re all going to die” is to ignore the difference between dying at 89 with dignity and dying at 39 from treatable illness or malnutrition.
Fatalism as a Shield
It’s not just callous—it’s strategic. By invoking inevitability, politicians avoid accountability. If death is just part of life, then no policy can be blamed for causing it. It’s the political equivalent of saying, “stuff happens.”
But constituents weren’t asking Ernst to stop death itself. They were asking her to stop unnecessary death—avoidable death, cruel death, death by legislative neglect.
And on that, she had nothing to say.
What Comes Next?
This moment should not be allowed to fade into the noise. Ernst’s response needs to be taken seriously, because it reflects a worldview where empathy is expendable and suffering is someone else’s problem.
Town halls are where democracy breathes. If a senator hears warnings of death and meets them with a shrug, we should all be asking: What exactly is she in office to do?
As the budget battles continue and vulnerable Americans hang in the balance, one thing is now crystal clear: the consequences are deadly—and some elected officials just don’t care.
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