Congress has enacted the Big Brutal Bill and Donald Trump has signed it into law.
This bill is deadly.
According to researchers from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts plus other health care cuts—the largest in history—will result in the deaths of 51,000 people per year. Those deaths include 18,200 people who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare, 20,000 people who will lose health care coverage due to the elimination of the premium tax credit for the Affordable Care Act, and 13,000 deaths due to staffing cuts at nursing homes.
At a time when so many are struggling to afford the basic costs of living including groceries, new data from the Urban Institute shows that 5.3 million families will lose $25 or more per month in SNAP benefits, with the average such family losing $146 a month in help paying for food. Sixty-two percent of the families experiencing these very large SNAP losses include children.
All of this is being done in order to pay for extending the Trump tax scam—making tax breaks for the rich permanent—and funding Trump’s mass immigration detention and removal machine.
Congress needs to hear from you. Send a message thanking those who stood up and voted against this monstrosity of a bill, or send a message to your members of Congress who voted for it, admonishing them for their vote.
On Monday, June 21st, poor people, low-wage workers, moral and faith leaders, advocates and our growing coalition of supporters will gather online simultaneously with a (socially-distant) rally in Raleigh, North Carolina for a National Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers Assembly. The Coalition on Human Needs is proud to support and participate.
More than 140 million people across the United States live in or near poverty, struggle with low wages and are one emergency away from economic ruin. 250,000 people die every year from poverty in the wealthiest nation on the planet.
We can’t be silent anymore in the face of this reality.
The First Reconstruction followed the Civil War. The civil rights struggles of the 20th century proved to be the Second Reconstruction. Our Third Reconstruction will be a revival of our constitutional commitment to establish justice, provide for the general welfare, end decades of austerity, and recognize that policies which center the 140 million people, who struggle financially, are also good economic policies that can heal and transform our nation.
Here’s what we are going to do: This Monday, on June 21st at 5:30 p.m. ET we will gather online from all 50 U.S. states and territories. Together, we will build a strong coalition of people to fight for our country’s Third Reconstruction.
We are already beginning to plan for the Poor People’s Campaign for next year—and Monday’s event is the first public step. Next June’s event will be a generationally-transformative in-person Moral March on Washington on June 18, 2022. Together, next summer, we will flood the streets of Washington, DC and create a national stage for the voices and leadership of people directly impacted by poverty, racism and their interlocking injustices.