BETHLEHEM, Pa. — U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie addressed constituents' questions about the One Big Beautiful Bill and the Jeffrey Epstein investigation during a telephone town hall Wednesday night.
Mackenzie, the Lehigh Valley's freshman Republican lawmaker, took nine questions in a little under an hour.
The event came as the House begins its summer session early after passing many of President Donald Trump's top priorities, including extending and expanding tax cuts from his first term, bolstering spending for border security and immigration enforcement, and stripping federal funding away from public media and foreign aid initiatives.
Throughout the event, Mackenzie and some of the callers hailed the One Big Beautiful Bill as a lifeline for working families. The law expanded and extended Trump's 2017 tax cuts, including the child tax credit and a halt on taxes for most overtime and tip pay.
"Every single American will see tax relief from this legislation that is now law."U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh Valley
Had the bill not passed, Mackenzie noted, most families would have seen their taxes increase at a time when many can't afford it.
"Every single American will see tax relief from this legislation that is now law," Mackenzie said.
Similarly, he praised the wide-ranging law for providing more assistance to farmers and boosting border security. Securing the border was a top priority of his, he said. With that out of the way, he expects Congress to explore ways to improve legal immigration in the coming months, he said.
Not everyone on the call was sold on Trump's signature law, however. One questioned the wisdom of the bill given that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office believes the act will raise the national deficit by an estimated $3.3 trillion.
Another caller asked Mackenzie to explain if the law will really cut SNAP, the popular food assistance program for the poor.
Mackenzie pushed back on the deficit estimates, saying he believes the findings are based on faulty assumptions. He was optimistic that economic growth will outperform the models, which will bring spending more in line.
And while he has been mildly critical of Trump's tariff plan in the past, Mackenzie noted Wednesday that federal revenues on tariffs have jumped by $100 billion already, which should allow the federal government to make some headway on its staggering debt.
"Something like that can help offset what we're projected to see in potential deficits in the future. I think we're trying to look at these things in totality. It's not just one particular change," Mackenzie said.
The national debt is now $36.7 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Interest payments now account for $749 billion, or 14% of all federal spending, surpassing Medicaid ($723 billion) and national defense ($682 billion).
Medicaid, SNAP and Epstein
Hundreds of people have protested the SNAP and Medicaid cuts outside Mackenzie's offices for months, accusing him and other Republicans of giving tax cuts to billionaires by slashing programs that serve the poor.
Mackenzie rejected that language Wednesday, describing the changes to Medicaid and SNAP as "government reform."
Mackenzie said the biggest change to SNAP was requiring states to improve how they administer the program. He noted that Pennsylvania has an error rate of 11%, meaning that 11% of its cases are providing benefits to people who shouldn't be eligible, providing too large a benefit to others and not enough of a benefit to still more. The target error rate is 6%, he said.
Mackenzie did not mention that Congress expanded work requirements to SNAP benefits. An estimated 3.3 million people will become ineligible for the program due to the changes, according to the Associated Press.
As for Medicaid, Mackenzie said the new work requirements there were needed to bring the program in line with other federal benefits programs.
When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, it expanded Medicaid to include more people but did not require them to meet the same work requirements. As a result, costs ballooned. The changes, Mackenzie said, were necessary to protect the program.
"If we want to maintain it for that traditional population we talked about — pregnant women, people with disabilities, children, low-income seniors — we had to make some reforms and put some traditional, commonsense guardrails in place," Mackenzie said.
Only one caller expressed any hostility to Mackenzie's work in Congress. After asking him a rhetorical question if he thought the One Big Beautiful Bill will widen the wealth gap, she pressed Mackenzie on whether he supports releasing investigators' findings about Epstein.
The New York financier and sex offender's death in custody in 2019 has sparked intense speculation and conspiracy theories. He has been linked to many of the nation's most powerful individuals, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Mackenzie backed publicly releasing the findings of the Epstein investigation. He criticized the Biden administration for failing to do so and said Congress should potentially intercede if the Trump administration doesn't disclose the information.
He noted that Trump has released long-withheld details of the investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy.
"The American people deserve to have full transparency and information about what is in those files. Ultimately, we're going to get there," Mackenzie said.
No in-person town halls
Republican lawmakers have largely shifted town halls into virtual spaces over the past six months after many members of Congress faced hostile crowds; conservatives have accused Democratic activists of ambushing the meetings.
Mackenzie has not held an in-person town hall since taking office in January, and Wednesday's event was announced about 10 hours beforehand. He and his office have praised the format for greater accessibility and for allowing more people to participate; his office said more than 7,000 people joined Wednesday's call.
Political opponents have accused Mackenzie and other Republicans of using the remote sessions to filter questions and avoid their constituents. Carol Obando-Derstine, one of three Democrats running against him in next year's race for Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, echoed those accusations Wednesday on social media.
"Ryan Mackenzie takes the coward's way out again and refuses to meet his PA-7 constituents for an in-person town hall. What is he afraid of?" she posted on Facebook before the event.
