‘If Republicans, and also many Democrats, were truly interested in cutting “waste,” they would target the bloated budget of the Pentagon, which has failed seven consecutive annual audits. If they wanted to combat “fraud and abuse,” they would stop the DOGE-driven staffing cuts at the Internal Revenue Service, which help tax cheats get away with hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes every year.’
More and more of us are demanding that the entire “Big Beautiful Bill,” lauded by President Trump, be dumped in its entirety. As Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, told RNS, “The bill is robbing from the poor to give to the rich.” Referring to the president’s immigration program and the fear among immigrants, he adds, “I feel like we’re in Nazi Germany in 1933.” And, “To me, this bill is so bad and so mean and so obviously geared toward the rich and against the poor that we can’t do that. . . I fear that by saying, ‘Oh yeah — well, parts of it we like and parts we don’t like,’ that kind of gives an implicit green light. There’s no way the Catholic Church can live with this bill. It’s a terrible bill, and it needs to be completely redone.”
This bill must be stopped, and it will take millions of us to insure that happens. It is from this perspective that we highlight below some of the many egregious effects of the bill on the working class of this country should Congress pass it:
Households that make less than $14,000 per year would see incomes fall by $800 in 2027, while the top one percent of wealthiest households would gain an average of $63,000, and the top 0.1% of Americans would see a gain of $389,000. The bill extends the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy.
Overall, the bill is a major frontal attack on all segments of the working class, from extremely low-income folks to upper-middle income people, with the biggest cuts falling on the poorest.
The House has already passed its version of the bill. It alone constitutes an extremely large upward redistribution of income. The biggest hits are to food assistance in various forms, meaning many more very hungry people, and cuts to Medicaid which will force millions off the program, leaving them without health care.
A group of economists notes: “The higher debt and deficits will put noticeable upward pressure on both inflation and interest rates in coming years.” That means the cost of food and other necessities will rise along with the costs of car loans, school loans, credit cards, etc.
“What the president made clear is [he] does not want to see any cuts to beneficiaries, but to go after, he repeated over and over, the waste, fraud and abuse, the waste, fraud and abuse.” But this is a lie.
But the Republicans have a problem. That is that all three major social programs (Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security) under fire serve millions of Americans, including millions of Trump voters. A KFF Poll found that despite weeks of Republicans banging the “waste, fraud and abuse” drum, most Americans worry about the impact of the Medicaid cuts. More than 70% of Americans, including 44% of Republicans, believe the GOP bill will cause more Americans to be uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates those cuts will leave more than 10 million Americans without health insurance.
But if Republicans deem “waste, fraud and abuse” sufficient cover for these severe health care cuts, not just for cuts to Medicaid but for cuts to Medicare as well, what’s to stop them from applying that to Social Security next? If Republicans, and also many Democrats, were truly interested in cutting “waste,” they would target the bloated budget of the Pentagon, which has failed seven consecutive annual audits. If they wanted to combat “fraud and abuse,” they would stop the DOGE-driven staffing cuts at the Internal Revenue Service, which help tax cheats get away with hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes every year.
SNAP (Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program):
SNAP would see the deepest cuts in its history. Over the next 10 years, $294 billion in food assistance reductions are estimated. In total, more than 3 million adults and 2 million children would be directly impacted and lose benefits.
The bill would push at least five percent of program costs and 75 percent of administrative costs onto individual states, mandating work requirements for SNAP eligibility and prohibiting changes to SNAP benefit amounts even if food costs rise.
This is a big change – increasing the age for the work requirement from age 54 to 64, and requiring work for parents with kids over age 7. SNAP would be restricted to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. States could potentially leave the program because of their own budget constraints, further leaving some poor families unable to obtain nutritional assistance. And some proposed changes to the way the government computes benefits could leave some households facing losses in their monthly allowances.
How SNAP cuts affects small farmers and rural communities:
The bill uses SNAP cuts to pay for an increase of $52 billion to agriculture commodity support programs that would serve a relatively small number of large-scale commodity farmers, by increasing crop insurance subsidies and creating exemptions that would allow for taxpayer-paid agricultural subsidies for millionaires and absentee landlords.
Small and mid-sized farmers who grow fruits and vegetables would not see benefits from this bill. In 2020 $33 million in SNAP benefits were redeemed at farmers markets, helping thousands of small farmers. Farmers have already suffered tremendous local market losses with the Trump administration’s termination of the Local Food Purchase Assistance and the Local Food in Schools and Child Care Centers programs. Overall, rural communities will be the most affected by these SNAP cuts.
MEDICAID:
Medicaid insures 72 million low-income and disabled Americans. Also, of the estimated 25.3 million uninsured Americans in 2023, 6.3 million were eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but not enrolled, often due to administrative barriers. Republicans promised to leave Medicaid intact, but that was a lie. The bill would make Medicaid more expensive and difficult to access, which would cut coverage for an estimated 7.8 million Americans by 2035.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would cut over $600 Billion from Medicaid in the next decade. Other estimates put the figure at from $700 billion up to $860 billion, the biggest cut in the history of the program.
Recipients without young children or disabilities would have new work requirements. Most Medicaid enrollees under 65 already have jobs. Beginning at the end of 2026, childless adults without disabilities would be required to work 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits. Also, the enrollment period would shift from once a year to every six months and adding additional income and residency verifications for enrolled individuals. This places a large bureaucratic burden on the poorest who often lack reliable internet access and transportation.
States would be required to charge copayments of up to $35 for some medical services for people with incomes above the federal poverty level https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines. The federal poverty level for a family of 3 is $26,650.
If Medicaid is slashed under the budget bill, rural hospitals and health systems, many of which are reliant on funding from the program, will be devastated. Attacks on the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA) that are currently focused on abortion, that no longer require hospital ERs to provide abortions to save the health of the mother, might be a precursor to additional attacks on care provided to the increasing numbers of people going to ERs because they don’t have insurance.
It’s also indirectly an attack on hospitals. We can expect to see a lot more hospital closures and mergers. This is something to watch.) Rural hospitals are particularly vulnerable. Hospital closures outpaced openings in rural areas from 2017 to 2024, and many rural hospitals have dropped specific service lines over time. They are already in crisis, with many closing, forcing people to travel long distances for care.
Forty-one states chose to expand Medicaid many years ago because the Federal government paid 90% of the cost of the expansion. Now, that may be cut to 80%.
Texas never expanded Medicaid and has the highest number and percentage of people without health insurance. The bill would reduce federal funding for Medicaid expansion in any states that offer Medicaid coverage to lawfully present immigrants, including children and pregnant people; it would ban Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care.
NURSING HOME CUTS:
People with Medicare rely primarily on Medicaid, not Medicare, for long-term care (nursing home care). Medicaid paid for 61% of all long-term care in 2022 and more than 70% of Home- and Community-Based Services. The bill would undermine access to long-term care by shifting costs to states, likely resulting in cuts. It would also make it harder for people to qualify for Medicaid coverage and avoid gaps in care. The bill effectively repeals the Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Rule, endangering the lives of thousands of people with Medicare due to inadequate nursing facility staffing.
Many middle and upper-middle income families expect that Medicaid will be available to pay for nursing home care for their family members. This could be one of the cuts that impacts more than just low-income people, possibly setting many millions more into political activity.
MEDICARE:
Republicans are breaking their promise not to undermine Medicare or cut benefits. They say they are rooting out ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’, which is a lie. They refuse to touch the biggest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the provision of health care, which is found in health insurance companies’ refusal to pay for needed medical care, harming both patients and medical providers. It was this denial of services that is said to have led Luigi Mangione to kill the CEO of the largest health care insurance company, United Health Care, which has the worst record for denial.
(Now politicians have threatened to force everyone on Medicare into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan. These plans are notorious for ripping off Medicare, doctors and patients. The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found that one insurance company received an additional $2.3 billion in Medicare Advantage reimbursements by upcoding diagnoses.)
Medicare insures over 55 million, predominantly seniors. Republicans have repeated promised not to undermine Medicare or cut Medicare benefits. The cuts to Medicare benefits are hidden. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would trigger future massive cuts to Medicare totaling nearly $500 Billion due to “PAYGO”, a budget rule that requires any reduction in revenue to be offset by cuts in other areas of the budget. Nearly 1.4 million low-income people with Medicare would lose critical cost-sharing assistance that covers Medicare’s $185/month Part B premium and helps them afford needed care. People who would lose this financial assistance are already living on limited incomes. Individuals who lost Medicaid and Medicare Part D Low-Income Subsidy which reduces prescription drugs experienced 4% to 22% higher mortality than those who retained coverage.
Also, working people who receive health insurance from their employers may face higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs. That’s because doctors and hospitals may try to charge them more to make up the difference if Medicare pays them less. Again, this would likely affect a somewhat more affluent section of the working class than the very low-income sector.
THE BORDER AND IMMIGRATION
THE BORDER:
The bill allocates $46.5 billion toward completing Trump’s border wall. It also allots $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and more than $6 billion to hire and retain more agents and officers. The legislation also invests in upgraded technology for screenings and surveillance of U.S. borders.
IMMIGRATION:
A variety of new fees for immigrants are proposed: a fee of $1,000 from asylum seekers, a $550 charge for work authorization applications with renewal every six months, a $3,500 fee for sponsoring unaccompanied children without legal status, a $1,000 charge for undocumented individuals paroled into the U.S. and a $500 fee for those applying for temporary protected status.
Republicans have lied, saying they won’t cut Medicare. The bill would terminate Medicare coverage for many individuals with lawful immigration status who have worked and paid taxes in the US for decades, yet the government would continue to collect Medicare taxes on their wages! This is a significant departure from current, longstanding policy, which recognizes eligibility for everyone who has paid sufficient Social Security and Medicare taxes on wages to be considered “fully insured.” Medicare already prohibits payment for care for anyone who is undocumented. The bill would cut off these individuals’ access to Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits that could make buying private health insurance affordable once they are ineligible for Medicare. Because current federal law already restricts Medicaid eligibility for people with lawful status who do not have a green card, many of these individuals will likely end up uninsured.
STUDENTS:
The bill would cut $330 billion from the student loan system by scrapping several existing repayment options, including the Biden-era SAVE program that based payments on income and household size. It replaces them with a new, standard repayment plan and an income-based plan Republicans call their “Repayment Assistance Plan.” There would be significant changes to the Pell Grant, adjusting eligibility for the award; placing stricter limits on federal loans borrowers can take out; repealing regulations related to gainful employment and borrower defense; and including a risk-sharing provision that would put schools on the hook for a portion of unpaid student loan balances.
The bill also includes changes to the Pell Grant program for low-income students – require 30 credit hours per year to receive the maximum Pell amount; require that Pell students be enrolled at least half-time, or 15 credit hours per year, to qualify. That could ultimately result in less aid for many students.
MILITARY:
The bill increases spending for the military and for the border. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky said, “It’s about $320 billion in new spending. To put that in perspective, that’s more than all the DOGE cuts that we have found so far.”
CONCLUSION:
We live in a nation of plenty. There’s plenty of money, food, housing, health care and other necessities. Yet, we are fighting for our survival amidst the plenty because the billionaires, their corporations, and the politicians that represent them are attacking the little we have so they can take it all. There is no one to save us but ourselves, working collectively for working class solidarity. We encourage you to join the effort of thousands who are opposed to this bill and who are building a movement for a society that provides its immense wealth and resources for us all.
SOURCES: Abcnews.go.com; cbo.gov (http://www.cbo.gov/); medicarerights.org (http://www.medicarerights.org/); npr.org; ncan.org (http://www.ncan.org/), kff.org (http://www.kff.org/);thehill.com (http://www.thehill.com/); cpbb.org (http://www.cpbb.org/);news.bloomberglaw.com; farmdocdaily.illinois.edu
sustainableagriculture.net; politico.com (http://www.politico.com/)
thenationshealth.org (http://www.thenationshealth.org/); sciencedirect.com (http://www.sciencedirect.com/); campaignlegal.org; democrats-budget.house.gov; familiesusa.org; aspe.hhs.gov;
People’s Tribune.
