You don't get to do that with people's lives.
Choices...
We can never reduce the size of the federal workforce because it means people will lose jobs?
We can never cut any federal benefit or subsidy regardless of the cost, importance, or overall value to society because someone, somewhere is benefiting from it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Rei...
I was young, but I remember cries of "you can't do this to people!" then as well, just like we hear from a select group of people every time any cut is contemplated, which is why I asked the parent poster what exactly they mean by their comment.
Goverments and lawmakers do get to "do that with people's lives". And they do that, affecting them, all the time. Including affecting them negatively a lot of the time.
And it gets worse: ineffective bureucracies (or incompetend ones) also "get to do that with people's lives"
["that" being: affecting them negatively, destroying their livehood, even causing deaths, e.g. consider some country's organization similar to FEMA being incompetent when there's a crisis].