A Statement by the Poor People’s Campaign
(A Statement on the passage of the largest reduction in health care and food assistance in American history)
The Big Beautiful Bill is, in fact, the Big Ugly, Destructive, and Deadly bill.
House Republicans just approved the largest cuts in health care and food assistance in American history, thanks to Trump’s big, ugly, destructive, and deadly bill. About 17 million people will lose health coverage, and 5 million are at risk of losing food aid, which involves the biggest cuts to America’s safety net, including Medicaid, SNAP benefits, and other vital services for millions of low-income Americans.
The bill is unconscionable, cruel, and has deadly consequences. The bill would provide $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires, while increasing taxes for the poorest 20 percent of Americans.
Please read Margo Schulter’s story (was shared during Moral Monday, June 9, 2025):
‘My name is Margo Schulter, and I am a senior with disabilities living in Sacramento, Indigenous Nisenan Territory, which is my neighborhood.
‘The Administration and Congress are Hurting Our People & We Won’t Be Silent Anymore!!
‘Thank you all for the opportunity to speak about the present crisis as it impacts me by threatening five of my vital supports. I hope you will give at least equal attention to those who have already been more impacted: for example, the unhoused and the medically uninsured. I am a poster child at the age of 74 for how these programs can support a decent and dignified life when available in the right combination. I have a saying: “I’m just down enough to know how high up I am” — in other words, how I might be impacted if I didn’t have the five supports, I’m about to address and the immoral budget Congress is now considering were to be implemented.
‘First comes Supplemental Security Income (SSI). While Social Security isn’t supposed to be at issue, we saw the attack on its effective and reliable administration in the last few months and heard Elon Musk’s denunciation of it as a “Ponzi scheme.” So, we need to keep a lookout that Social Security continues to be funded with adequate administrative implementation.
‘Next comes a main endangered area: Medicaid, known in the State of California as Medi-Cal. As a senior and a person with disability, I’m eligible. In 2020, Medi-Cal helped fund my hospitalization and time in a skilled nursing facility after a stroke; in 2024, it funded my 17 days of hospitalization after a fall outside my apartment building which caused a broken femur. I’m lucky and am walking again.
‘Another vital support also funded by Medi-Cal and important to me as a senior and person with disabilities is In Home Supportive Services (IHSS), which provides me with a personal assistant to help me in keeping my apartment clean and safe and with grocery shopping and bathing. I get 106 hours monthly of this vital service, and the disastrous Medi-Cal cuts would endanger this for me and many other needy people.
‘Then there’s rent supports that help me to enjoy a good and livable apartment, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Threatening this is part of an immoral budget waging war on the poor. Housing vouchers, like the one I’ve been fortunate enough to have since 2006, are a prime nonviolent weapon against homelessness in the righteous war on poverty, a central focus for a moral budget.
‘Last but not least, there’s the program I got on this year: CalFresh, food stamps. This was after I was diagnosed with malnutrition, having experienced some months of unexplained underweight. At UC Davis Health, a dietician gave me the good news that there was nothing wrong with me except that I needed to eat more, and signing up for food stamps was one of my next moves. I had been taking pride in getting by without them, and it turned out that my health and proper nutrition required them.
‘With me, the immoral budget is threatening these vital supports that everyone in need would get under our Moral Budget. But the bigger story is that some people who need these supports have been living without them year after year. That’s why organizations such as the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) and Benefits Access and Equity (BAE) are working not only to stem this tide of attacks on basic supports, but to reverse it.
‘We need to keep on guard against the five pillars of evil: structural poverty; racism; ecological devastation; militarism; and false narratives of Christian nationalism. The anti-immigration measures and trumped-up claims of a “national emergency” illustrate racism and false narratives of religious nationalism. The immoral budget we are meeting with concerted nonviolent resistance also illustrates militarism: it proposes to increase wasteful military spending while drastically cutting Medicaid.
‘We draw hope and the strength to resist in the Poor People’s Campaign from the three Reconstructions: the First Reconstruction of 1865-1877 against slavery and for civil rights, for instance the racial integration of public schools in New Orleans; the Second Reconstruction of 1947-1968, against Jim Crow and also known as the Civil Rights Movement; and the Third Reconstruction that grew out of movements for justice in the decade of the 2010’s, and aims at the abolition of grinding poverty, declaring that “Everyone’s got a right to live.” In this crisis, we stand together for justice and a beloved community.
Saludos con paz y amor, Margo Schulter’
