Performance Review: Senator Ted Budd, North Carolina
An Open Letter to the Public
Senator Budd:
My BRONZE tier healthcare premium went from $350 to $1,257 per month because of your HR 1 vote.
I am in my 50s, self-employed and semi-retired, well above the poverty line. I saved responsibly, did everything Republicans celebrate as the markers of personal responsibility and success. Because of your vote, I will lose my health insurance. I cannot afford $1,257 per month. If someone like me—someone who did everything right—is forced out of the healthcare system you created, then what you’ve built is designed to fail.
But this letter is not about my healthcare alone. This is a performance review. You work for me and every other constituent in North Carolina. And you are failing to meet the basic expectations of your job.
Core Responsibility: Exercise Constitutional Advice and Consent
The Senate exists as a deliberative body—the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” senators call it. Your constitutional role is to provide careful consideration, amendment, and improvement of legislation from the House. You are supposed to be a check on hasty, harmful policy.
When HR 1 came to the Senate, you had access to the Congressional Budget Office analysis showing 4.2 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage from expired ACA premium tax credits. You knew average premiums would increase by 75%. You understood the bill would transfer wealth from working families to billionaires.
The Senate passed this bill 51-50, with Vice President Vance breaking the tie. Your vote was the deciding vote. Senator Thom Tillis—your Republican colleague from North Carolina, the senior senator from your own state—examined the same information and voted NO. He knew what this bill would do to North Carolina families. He took the political risk to vote against his party.
If you had joined him, this bill would have failed. Instead, you left Senator Tillis to stand alone and take the political heat for doing the right thing. You voted YES anyway.
Performance Assessment: Failed to exercise constitutional responsibility for deliberative review. Abandoned fellow North Carolina senator who voted to protect constituents. Cast the deciding vote that made devastating healthcare cuts possible despite clear evidence of severe consequences and a clear example of courage from your own state’s senior senator.
Core Responsibility: Tell North Carolinians the Truth
On July 1st, you issued a statement celebrating your vote, promising “historic tax cuts for North Carolina families” that would help people “deserve more of their hard-earned wages” and create “a thriving economy.”
What you never mentioned: The bill deliberately let enhanced ACA premium tax credits expire at year-end. Over 1 million North Carolinians buy private health insurance through healthcare.gov. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, their average premiums increased by 75%. For me, that’s a $907 monthly increase—$10,884 annually. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 4.2 million Americans lost coverage entirely because they cannot afford the increases.
You celebrated giving “the average North Carolinian $2,474 in 2026” through tax cuts. My premium increase completely erases that savings and adds $8,410 in new costs.
Performance Assessment: Deliberately misleading constituents about direct impact of legislative votes. Celebrates tax cuts while hiding healthcare cost increases that eliminate any benefit for working families.
Core Responsibility: Protect North Carolina Families
Over 1 million North Carolinians purchase health insurance through healthcare.gov. We’re not on Medicaid, although you gutted that too with your vote. We’re self-employed workers, small business owners, early retirees—exactly the people Republicans claim to champion. Your vote made healthcare unaffordable for us to pay for tax cuts that primarily benefit billionaires.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bottom 10% of Americans lose 4% of their resources under your bill, while the top 10% gain 2%. For families already struggling, that 4% means real hunger, untreated illness, and homelessness. For me, it means I will go uninsured. I cannot afford $1,257 per month. At 50-something, self-employed, with no employer coverage to fall back on. This is the “personal responsibility” you celebrate in campaign speeches—until your vote made it impossible.
Performance Assessment: Policy decisions directly harm hundreds of thousands of constituents to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Votes against the economic interests of working-class North Carolinians despite campaign promises to help them.
Core Responsibility: Keep Government Open and Serving Americans
For 35 days—now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history—the federal government has been closed. Approximately 900,000 federal workers have been furloughed. Another 1.4 million work without pay. SNAP benefits have been suspended, leaving 600,000 North Carolina children without food assistance.
The Senate has voted 14 times on continuing resolutions to reopen the government. Every vote fails because Democrats refuse to fund the government without restoring the enhanced ACA premium tax credits—the subsidies your HR 1 vote let expire. These subsidies have 78% public support, including majorities of Republicans.
Meanwhile, the House hasn’t held a legislative session since September 19—46 days. Speaker Johnson sent members home and said they wouldn’t return until the Senate acts. But any Senate bill must go back to the House for a vote. Your party created a perfect accountability vacuum: the House won’t work, the Senate blames Democrats, and you remain silent while constituents suffer.
Performance Assessment: Cast deciding vote for legislation that eliminated ACA subsidies, directly causing government shutdown. Failed fundamental responsibility to keep government open and serving Americans. Remains silent while North Carolinians go without food assistance for vulnerable citizens (the furloughed, children, working mothers, the poor) and healthcare to over a million taxpayers.
Core Responsibility: Deliver On Campaign Promises
You promised to help working-class North Carolinians. You said you’d fight for small business owners. You pledged to make healthcare more accessible and affordable.
I am a working-class North Carolinian approaching full retirement. I am self-employed—exactly the kind of small business owner Republicans celebrate in campaign speeches. Your vote made my healthcare unaffordable and costs me $10,884 annually—money I need to stretch my retirement savings.
The Congressional Budget Office analysis shows your bill transfers resources from those struggling to those thriving: the bottom 10% lose 4% of their resources while the top 10% gain 2%. You promised to help working families and delivered the opposite.
Performance Assessment: Delivers opposite of promised results. Policy outcomes directly contradict campaign commitments. Prioritizes party loyalty over constituent welfare.
Performance Review Summary
In any other workplace, an employee with this performance record would not survive their annual review.
An employee who delivers the opposite of what they promised? Terminated.
An employee who casts the deciding vote for legislation that devastates the people who hired them? Terminated.
An employee who deliberately misleads their supervisors about their work’s impact? Terminated.
An employee who remains silent while a crisis they created harms thousands? Terminated.
But you’re not in a normal workplace. Your performance review accountability comes in four years, when North Carolina voters decide whether to rehire you.
They will remember that they lost healthcare. They will remember there is less food on the table. They will remember the painful tradeoffs they had to make because of your vote. They will remember you not speaking up to help, only the emails blaming others for the impact of your YES vote on HR 1.
Corrective Action Required
You cast the deciding vote that let ACA subsidies expire. You created this crisis for over 1 million North Carolinians. Take responsibility for fixing it.
Here is what I expect you to do:
Restore the enhanced ACA premium tax credits. Co-sponsor legislation to reinstate them immediately. Seventy-eight percent of Americans, including majorities of Republicans, support extending them.
End the government shutdown. Use your position to demand the House return to work. Negotiate in good faith to restore subsidies and reopen the government.
Stop sending misleading newsletters. Tell North Carolinians the truth about the healthcare costs that eliminate any benefit for working families.
Show the courage Senator Tillis showed. He voted NO, knowing the political cost. He stood up for North Carolina families even when it meant standing alone—because you wouldn’t stand with him. You voted YES. You let him take the heat by himself. Prove that vote wasn’t just about party loyalty by working now to fix the damage it caused.
I am making this public because you hid the truth from your constituents. Because over 1 million North Carolinians buying marketplace insurance face the same premium crisis. Because propaganda only works when people don’t know they’re being deceived.
Bonnie A Ross
Constituent, North Carolina
In my 50s | Self-employed and semi-retired
$907 monthly premium increase due to HR 1
Losing health insurance because of Senator Budd’s deciding YES vote
This letter will be distributed to local and national media, healthcare policy organizations, and democracy advocacy networks.
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