Timothy Kaine

They heard, once again, how healthcare and food stamp cuts, and tariff- and war-fueled inflation, squeeze Virginians’ finances — but Sen. Tim Kaine, D- Va., and Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-4th, told nonprofit and city officials that change is coming.

If, as McClellan told the Wednesday roundtable at Feedmore, “there’s a cost-of-living crisis that the current administration and Congress is either incapable or (unwilling) to fix,” November’s midterm election will make a difference, the two legislators said.

“I’m trying to gather intel on the theory that we’re going to have at least one Democratic chamber starting in the next Congress,” Kaine told the roundtable.

“We might have two, so … we’re not just going to be, you know, saying, ‘No,’ or, ‘Please don’t vote that way,’” as Democrats have had to be saying to the Republican leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives, Kaine said.

“We’re going to have to put affirmative agendas on the table with some chance of passing. That’s exciting, that’s exciting,” he said.

“Some are worried that President Trump might just want revenge, and that’s a possibility. On the other hand, he will have his last two years of his presidency left … you want to get some wins on the board. You want to do some good stuff,” Kaine said.

During Trump’s first term, he signed bills Kaine sponsored for federal recognition for Virginia tribes and to raise the age for buying tobacco to 21.

“We got that done under President Trump. He would do the bill signing. He wouldn’t invite me to it. He would say it was his idea,” Kaine said.

But it happened.

McClellan said everywhere she travels in her Richmond-anchored district, including its rural stretches, “everybody is hurting because costs of housing, child care, groceries, gasoline, healthcare is soaring.”

In January next year, “we know out of the gate, the first 10 bills, HR one through 10 are going to be addressing this cost-of-living crisis, as well as strengthening the right to vote,” she said.

While the impact of cuts in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits is something legislators have heard before, Kaine said he was surprised to hear at the roundtable about how damaging the proposed changes to Head Start could be.

Those include regulations on teacher qualifications and staff-to-child ratios, as well as rules on working with families in languages other than English, new requirements to prove homelessness, and new standards for screening for disabilities. All mean big changes for a program that’s meant to help toddlers get ready for school.

“I thought if the administration is making these changes, Virginia will still do it the right way … now I see why these Head Start changes hurt us,” Kaine said.

At Feedmore, the food bank that distributes food through a network of more than 380 food pantries in central Virginia, Kaine and McClellan got a briefing on Virginians’ struggles to feed their families.

“Since July of last year, we’ve seen a 22% increase in visits to our food pantry partners; 85% of the food that we get is donated, so we’ve seen about a 10% decrease in the food that we’re getting,” Feedmore chief executive Dennis Hatchett said.

Cuts to Medicaid in Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” were designed to come after the November election, but Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Marvin Figueroa said hospitals are already feeling pressure as they try to budget.

“We have about 13 to 14 distressed hospitals. The hospitals just don’t close. They start reducing their services … We’ve seen six primary health clinics close … We’ve seen eight school-based health funds close that FQHCs run, mostly in Appalachia,” Figueroa said, referring to Federally Qualified Health Centers, community clinics in underserved areas that care for people whether or not they have insurance or can pay for treatment.

“So we’re nervous when these Medicaid cuts actually go into effect. If these are the closures before they come into effect, the next year could be very, very rocky because of those Medicaid cuts,” Figueroa said.