Letter to the Editor:
Why Choose Suffering?
When it comes to healthcare, food assistance, research, compassion, foreign aid, and war, he keeps choosing policies that deepen our suffering instead of relieving it. That is a betrayal of the people.
Healthcare: Lawler chooses suffering.
Lawler voted for massive cuts that threaten Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are life saving. They are the difference between security and medical debt, and between treatment and health decline and death.
Food Security: Lawler chooses suffering.
Lawler’s vote to slash food assistance is cruel. Thousands of households in his district depend on SNAP. According to the New York Health Foundation, food insecurity in suburban areas such as NY-17, reached a five-year high in 2025-26, surpassing pandemic year levels.
Medical research: Lawler chooses suffering.
Cuts to federal science and medical funding slow cancer breakthroughs, weaken clinical trials, and drive talented researchers away. Lawler’s deep cuts to federal funding of scientific research. According to Nature, a poll of 1,600 researchers resulted in more than 75% saying they were considering leaving the United States. Lawler is postponing cures and prolonging pain.
Foreign aid, Lawler chooses suffering.
Lawler has backed policies that weaken America’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises and save lives abroad. Aid programs provide food, medicine, disaster relief, and support for communities that are devastated by poverty and disease. According to the Impact Counter estimates, USAID funding cuts more than 762,000 people have died as a result of those cuts, including more than 500,000 children.
War, Lawler chooses suffering.
In June 2025, President Trump declared that U.S. military strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. Therefore, Lawler’s failure to prioritize diplomacy over war was reckless and the outcome was tragic. When leaders support reckless escalation, civilians pay the price not only in rising prices and debt, but more importantly in injury and death.
Lawler has deliberately voted for us to suffer. It’s time for the suffering to end. Vote Lawler out in November!
Mark A. Lieberman
Yorktown, NY
