This article by Matt Alley first appeared on the BlueCollarWriter Labor Media site.
“We deserve better than being collateral damage for someone else’s profit margin. And don’t let any suit in Washington or your local courthouse tell you otherwise.”
Here we are, watching the Senate proudly pass their version of the Big Beautiful Bill — yet another slab of legislative concrete about to be dropped squarely on the shoulders of working-class and rural Americans. You’d think by now we’d be used to the weight of bad policy disguised as some masterstroke of “fiscal responsibility.” But no matter how many times they slap a new name on the same old disaster, the end result never changes: we get gutted, and the donor class gets a nice fat return on their investment.
Let me spell this out for my fellow rural Americans — especially my people in Appalachia, where our towns have grown painfully uniform in what’s left to offer. Some of you know exactly what I mean: the local grocery store that’s half-empty because the corporate owners can’t justify fully stocking the shelves when they know half the county is on SNAP just to feed their kids. The chain pharmacy — your Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, whatever the logo says — that makes more money off its pharmacy window than the overpriced junk in the aisles. And let’s be honest: that pharmacy window often only stays open because of the Medicaid and Medicare safety nets that keep these corporate storefronts breathing in these small towns.
What happens when this Big Beautiful Bill — with its carefully hidden cuts, its so-called “cost-sharing,” or its bureaucratic new hoops — rips a hole in those programs? I’ll tell you what happens: the lifeline gets shorter. Local jobs vanish. The store where you used to pick up bread and milk closes early or doesn’t open at all. The chain pharmacy cuts hours, then staff, then disappears altogether.
And if you think it stops there, think again. You slash Medicaid, you’re not just hurting families and the corner pharmacy. You’re swinging an axe at the heart of our rural hospitals and community clinics too. Many of these hospitals are already one bad balance sheet away from shutting their doors for good. For them, every dollar matters — and when those Medicaid reimbursements dry up, so does the only local access to emergency care, prenatal care, elder care, or mental health support for miles and miles.
When a rural hospital closes, it’s not just the doctors and nurses who lose their jobs. It’s the You slash Medicaid, you’re not just hurting families and the corner pharmacy. You’re swinging an axe at the heart of our rural hospitals and community clinics too, the transport van drivers, the overnight security. Entire webs of service jobs exist because those hospitals and clinics keep the community alive — literally and economically.
Hell, I’m still waiting on my local grocery store to reopen since the floods back in February. I’d love to think it’s just the construction delays and not the bean counters in some corporate office watching this bill creep through Congress and wondering if it’s even worth reopening in a town where half the customers may lose their benefits next year. Maybe I’m paranoid — maybe it’s just speculation — but if you think the suits in those boardrooms aren’t running those numbers right now, maybe it’s time to take a business course.
Loss of jobs — that’s the real kicker, isn’t it? These so-called “fiscal conservatives” love to stand on stage and thump their chests about bringing jobs back to rural America. Meanwhile, they’re chiseling away at the very foundation that keeps a lot of our communities afloat. You gut Medicaid, you gut hospitals. You gut hospitals, you gut every family that depends on that steady paycheck — and every local business that depends on those paychecks being spent in town instead of disappearing to some chain store forty miles down the road.
These senators love to trot out their big, shiny bill with their big, shiny slogans, pretending they’re doing God’s work by “ending dependency” or “cutting waste.” But ask yourself: where does that money go when it leaves your town? It doesn’t stay in the hills of Kentucky or the hollers of West Virginia. It gets sucked up to corporate headquarters, tax havens, and campaign war chests — all while we’re left to argue with each other about whether we “deserve” the crumbs they toss back our way.
So, when they pat themselves on the back tonight and spin it like a win for “real Americans,” ask yourself: when did “real Americans” come to mean “rural Americans should get less, so billionaires can get more”? And more importantly, when will we stop buying that line of bull?
It’s not too late to raise hell. Pick up the phone, write the letter, show up at the town hall — remind them that rural America isn’t just a photo op or a campaign slogan. We’re real people with real bills to pay, kids to feed, jobs that depend on these programs, hospitals that keep our neighbors alive, and towns that will dry up and blow away if we let them keep passing “big, beautiful” betrayals like this one.
We deserve better than being collateral damage for someone else’s profit margin — and don’t let any suit in Washington, or your local courthouse, tell you otherwise.
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