Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Thursday singled out Vice President JD Vance for his support of the Republican Party’s reconciliation bill, saying he sold out his values and his old constituents by backing the legislation.
“Of all the people who betrayed folks this week and today, the one we’re going to make sure pays for it is JD Vance,” Martin told NOTUS in an interview.
Martin’s pointed criticism was a reminder that as much as Democrats plan to use the bill to target congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump ahead of next year’s midterm elections, they also see it as a cudgel against the vice president should he run for president in 2028.
“We’re going to remind everyone that this guy who says he grew up in Appalachia and has never forgotten his roots, the minute he could he sold people down the river,” Martin said.
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The vice president cast the tie-breaking vote Monday to pass the bill out of the Senate, after three GOP senators — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined every independent and Democratic senator in opposition to the bill.
Footage of his tie-breaking vote will “be his albatross,” Martin said.
“We’re going to make sure that he carries that going forward the rest of his political career, which we will end in 2028,” the DNC chair said.
A spokesperson for Vance responded that Martin “is focused on 2028 because he has no message the American people care about in 2025, meanwhile President Trump is delivering the biggest working class tax cut in history, bringing down prices by unleashing American energy, and securing the southern border.”
The legislation offers a particular political challenge for Vance, who has touted himself as a new kind of working-class Republican leader. The Republican Party’s affinity for Wall Street, he has said in the past, needs to be replaced by a focus on small towns across America, even if the policies that support those communities conflict with the party’s long-standing fiscal conservatism.
In recent days, Vance has promoted the bill less as a fiscal measure and more as one to bolster immigration enforcement, pointing to its funding boost for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and provisions to remove undocumented immigrants from Medicaid.
“Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” he posted on X this week.
Vance and other Republicans have defended the bill as necessary to boost economic growth and protect Medicaid long term by removing people from the health care program’s rolls they don’t think deserve access.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is herself seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028, in a post on X this week also criticized Vance’s stance on the bill.
“An absolute and utter betrayal of working families,” she said.
Martin emphasized that Vance’s vote should undercut his image as a blue-collar champion.
“There’s no doubt when you think about JD Vance, he’s nothing but Silicon Valley sellout who’s following in Donald Trump’s footsteps in defrauding the American people,” the chairman said. “A snake-oil salesman to the core, tell them what they want to hear and do nothing to deliver for them.”
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