Editor’s note: CHN sent the letter below on May 21, 2025 to every U.S. House of Representatives office asking Members to vote “No” on the reconciliation proposal — text as of May 21, 7 pm ET.

May 21, 2025

Dear Representative:

On behalf of the Coalition on Human Needs, I strongly urge you to vote NO on the reconciliation text before the full House of Representatives. We outline many of our reasons for opposition this package below.

The Coalition on Human Needs is made up of human service providers, faith groups, policy experts, and civil rights, labor, and other organizations concerned with meeting the needs of people with low incomes.  We are concerned about the overall budget reconciliation package, which makes deep cuts to basic needs programs and will take assistance away from people with low incomes, seeking harsh reductions in SNAP, Medicaid, higher education, and other human needs programs.

CUTS to NUTRITION PROGRAMS: The House Agriculture Committee proposal will cut $295 billion from SNAP, the largest cut to SNAP in history, as part of a budget package that guts basic needs programs. Approximately 3 million Americans are at risk of losing SNAP – and millions more will see benefits reduced, making it harder to put food on the table.

At a time that many in communities across the country are struggling with the high cost of living, SNAP provides many of our neighbors with vital food benefits to purchase groceries from local food retailers. It serves people of all ages, staves off hunger, promotes well-being, and serves people in every Congressional District (see also state numbers including the numbers of children and people in rural areas who participate in the program). SNAP provides much more than just food assistance: It is a critical support system that promotes economic well-being and better health outcomes. The program plays a vital role in addressing hunger, reducing health care costs, and improving the long-term prospects of households with low incomes, including the one in five beneficiaries who are children. SNAP has been shown to improve student performance and allows families to maintain healthy diets, which in turn leads to long-term positive health outcomes for children and adults alike.

The Coalition on Human Needs is alarmed about the inclusion of a new and radical proposal to shift the cost of SNAP benefits to the states for the first time – at a minimum of 5% but likely much larger for most states. The loss of part of federal funding for SNAP for your state could be devastating for state and local budgets – we urge you to review Feeding America’s State-by-State Resource: SNAP Cost Shifting Fact Sheets to understand the huge hole this could leave in your state’s budget based on SNAP Payment Error Rates via the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. This violates a longstanding and bipartisan tradition in our country of meeting the needs of our most vulnerable populations by ensuring basic nutrition programs like SNAP can respond no matter which state or county that child or adult may live in – instead, many states will be forced to remove participants in the program given this huge shift in costs to the states.

We also oppose penalizing  adults without children and those with school-aged children in every Congressional District (and their families) facing job losses by taking away SNAP benefits through harsher work requirements – even though making it tougher for people to meet their basic nutrition needs makes it more difficult for people to find work, especially in a tough economy. Making SNAP’s existing and harmful time limits even more stringent will ensnarl people in bureaucratic red tape, and harm families with new time limits for families with children as young as 7. Many families are being squeezed by rising prices — and this gets worse if we unexpectedly fall on tough times. We know that the cuts and even harsher paperwork requirements proposed will deny food assistance along with health care and other basic needs to people who need it. When families face economic reverses, smart, targeted support can keep people in their homes, children fed and in school, disabled veterans cared for, and workers on the job.

Many of our coalition partners are alarmed at the new proposal to limit eligibility for SNAP to only citizens and Legal Permanent Residents/green card holders (Section 10012). Current policy limits eligibility for SNAP to “qualified immigrants” as defined under PRWORA.  Adults who are qualified immigrants are generally subject to a five year waiting period before they can access SNAP, but the five year bar does not apply to children, refugees and certain other humanitarian immigrants. The bill would limit eligibility for SNAP to citizens and LPRs/green card holders. The five year bar for adults would remain.  All other immigrants, including humanitarian immigrants, would be ineligible – which could impact an estimated 434,000 refugees and others such as asylees, across the country. We support efforts to remedy this in the Rules Committee, and hope you’ll support access to food assistance for those who need it.

In addition, we are concerned about proposals to cut SNAP by restricting future updates of the Thrifty Food Plan — which is used to determine SNAP benefit amounts — which would hurt 41 million people per year. SNAP benefits now average only $6.20 per person per day. Making it harder to adjust SNAP benefits based on the cost of food in local grocery stores will make it even tougher for families to put food on the table.

Overall, reduced SNAP benefits would hurt the broader economy, could lead to a loss of jobs in your state, and harm retailers in every county in your District. Food retailers, including grocery stores and farmers’ markets, depend on SNAP dollars to stay afloat. In areas where food retailers are already struggling, any reduction in SNAP benefits would have a harsh impact on businesses and the local economy. Food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens are reporting high demand for assistance. We all know the cost of food is high. While emergency food programs help, they only provide one meal for every nine meals that SNAP supplies. These emergency food providers cannot make up for the scope of this SNAP cut. Some of the proposals to set limits to the SNAP program could result in waiting lists while further straining food banks.

Many in our networks are concerned about rising costs—and with the combination of uncertainty with tariffs and deep cuts to food assistance and health care, we worry that many more families will struggle to make ends meet, facing the loss of jobs, rising prices, and signs of economic downturn. Families are frightened they will lose their ability to feed their children through deep cuts to SNAP in the Agriculture Committee’s portion of this package.

In addition, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP impact access to school meals along with access to WIC.

CUTS to HEALTH PROGRAMS: The House Energy and Commerce proposal will cut nearly $800 billion, the largest cut to Medicaid in history, as part of a budget package that guts basic needs programs. 8.6 million are at risk of losing health care coverage as a result of just the E&C proposal (plus more from the overall reconciliation package), with the majority of those losing Medicaid coverage.

Medicaid is not just a line item in a budget ― it’s a lifeline for millions of people and families. Medicaid is critical to the well-being of older adults, children, people with disabilities, family caregivers, care workers, and families in EVERY community and each Congressional District. This will have a substantial impact on the health system as a whole, and these cuts could lead to a loss of  jobs in your state. The harsh cuts proposed for Medicaid will put local health care providers at risk and force rural hospitals and nursing homes to close, shutter drug treatment programs and reduce access to mental health services, and make it harder for everyone to access the health care they need.

We know that the cuts and paperwork requirements proposed will deny health care to people who need it. CHN strongly opposes penalizing people facing job losses by taking away Medicaid through harsh work reporting requirements that ensnarl people in bureaucratic red tape — taking away Medicaid’s health services does not help people find jobs and instead makes it more difficult for people to find work, especially in a tough economy. In addition, people with conditions like severe pain, fatigue, or mental illness may not qualify as ‘disabled enough’ to be exempted from these new work requirements.

Evidence shows that millions of eligible Medicaid participants, including children and people with disabilities, could lose coverage with complicated and frequent eligibility checks along with other paperwork requirements.  A recent analysis by Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly 70% of people who lost Medicaid between April 2023 and September 2024 were terminated for procedural reasons alone—most often due to missed paperwork. Additionally, research from the HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation shows that, based on pre-pandemic data, 72% of children dropped from Medicaid during redeterminations were actually eligible for coverage.

As CHN member Justice in Aging wrote for our blog (Broken Promises: Budget Reconciliation Bill Would Cut Medicare), nearly 1.4 million low-income people with Medicare—more than 10% of the dually eligible population—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., Their dollars would be stretched even further, forcing some to choose between paying for health care and other basic needs like food and rent and increasing risk of evictions.

We also have deep concerns about the impact of new budget proposals on state budgets, including the ripple effect on “optional” services that allow seniors and people with disabilities to live with dignity and independence in their own homes (more on the evidence that Medicaid cuts impact Home and Community Based Services). We also support efforts to undo the newly-added provision that would make 33 states plus DC that would lose Medicaid matching funds because they cover undocumented immigrants OR lawfully present pregnant women and children, the latter was NOT reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. We urge you to reject any attacks on health coverage or other basic needs programs that shift costs to the states – including potential amendments that attack health coverage for very low-income adults covered through the Affordable Care Act expansion.

The large loss of health coverage comes from massive cuts to Medicaid combined with failing to extend expiring Affordable Care Act marketplace premium credits. This will make insurance unaffordable for around 4.2 million people, undoing meaningful progress in covering more low-wage earners. Those losing coverage via attacks on the ACA comes on top of the 7.6 million people who will lose Medicaid coverage, and these changes will increase premium costs for people with private insurance. We also oppose ending ACA and Medicare eligibility for many lawfully present, taxpaying immigrants in this proposal. All told, if this bill becomes law, roughly 15 million people will lose their health care.

We all want a more efficient government. But cutting the heart out of basic needs programs including SNAP and Medicaid doesn’t eliminate fraud — it creates bigger problems down the road, shifting the burden to service providers, local governments, and taxpayers, and will lead to higher costs and more strain on American taxpayers.

CUTS to EDUCATION: We are concerned about deep cuts in the Education and Workforce Committee’s portion of the reconciliation package that could put higher education out of reach for low-income students because they will lose financial assistance. The proposal will slash financial aid programs, restrict access to Pell grants for low-income students, eliminate student loan interest subsidies, and remove hardship protections. By restricting access to Pell grants and eliminating the Parent PLUS loans, millions of students will be directed towards predatory, private loans that lack consumer protections. We support the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which allows borrowers who work in public service for 10 years―such as teachers, healthcare workers, and military service members―to have their loans forgiven as long as they make payments during those ten years. The current budget proposal would limit access to that program for 3.6 million borrowers.

Overall, this could mean only students from the wealthiest families can attend college without amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Expanding access to quality education doesn’t end in secondary school. Post-secondary education and training can help move people out of poverty and into lifelong careers.

We also want to lift up our concerns about the attacks on public education, including those in the Ways and Means portion of the reconciliation package. CHN opposes school voucher programs or any other program that provides public funds for for-profit entities or private schools, such as education savings accounts (ESAs) or tax credits. These programs disproportionately harm the most underserved communities, including low-income Black and Brown families along with students with disabilities and rural communities, while threatening the public education system that is the backbone of our democracy. Public dollars should stay in public schools, and voucher programs defund public education and allow discrimination.

Unfortunately, this package creates an unprecedented dollar-for-dollar tax credit for people steering money into nonprofit groups that distribute private K-12 school vouchers. This funds private schools that exclude countless children and could decimate the public schools that already struggle with budget shortfalls and leave most students and families worse off. This would be particularly devastating for rural areas. Contributors to these groups would also be able to reduce their taxes further by avoiding capital gains tax on contributions of appreciated stock, with the result being a profitable tax shelter overall. (The credit is a somewhat scaled back version of a bill that ITEP analyzed earlier this year.) This would cost $20 billion over the next decade.

TAX POLICIES THAT OVERWHELMINGLY BENEFIT THE WEALTHY. This is a massive tax bill, and CHN member ITEP’s analysis finds that the poorest fifth of Americans would receive 1 percent of the bill’s net tax cuts in 2026 while the richest fifth of Americans would receive two-thirds of the tax cuts. The richest 1 percent of Americans would receive a total of $138 billion in net tax cuts in 2026, significantly more than the $92 billion that would go the bottom 60 percent of Americans. CBO’s Preliminary Analysis of the Distributional Effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act underscores the combined impact of these tax cuts with the other cuts to basic needs programs in this bill, including overall losses for low-income taxpayers while versus gains for the top earners (visual here). The CBO’s distributional findings echo those of the Joint Committee on Taxation, that more than 2/3 of the total tax breaks will go to the top fifth of earners. As a result, “the average family earning less than $50,000 would get under $300 in tax cuts in 2027, less than $1 a day, while the average tax filer earning $1 million or more a year would receive about $90,000 in tax breaks” with egregious bonuses for the most wealthy including special deductions and exemption from the estate tax for wealthy heirs of $30 million per couple.

We note that millions of people with low incomes will lose access to basic needs programs all to give tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations. We cannot keep allowing the passage of these unfair tax policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy while making low-income and vulnerable communities suffer, including by taking food assistance and health care away from millions.

Unfortunately, policymakers did not use this opportunity to expand the Child Tax Credit to help families struggling to make ends meet despite the House’s overwhelming bipartisan vote to partially expand the CTC for lower-income families last year. Right now, 17 million children in lower-income families are left out of the full Child Tax Credit. Despite an overwhelming body of literature documenting that expanding the CTC is one of the best ways to help families with rising costs, this bill sharply limits who can access the credit and how much of it they can claim. While this proposal modestly increases the Child Tax Credit to $2,500 per child for some children, up from $2,000, roughly 20 million kids in every state would not receive the full $2,500 tax credit because their families make TOO LITTLE money―an average of $23,000 a year. In addition, this proposal denies eligibility to 4.5 million children (data on how many children in each state) who are citizens or legal permanent residents if their parents or guardians do not have Social Security numbers. Instead of using the budget process as an opportunity to support vulnerable children and families, policymakers are using this bill to continue to demonize and punish immigrants and the lowest-income families.  The Child Tax Credit can be a key policy in driving down poverty rates among children, but this proposal entrenches inequality – including in the Child Tax Credit. Congress should expand the CTC so that it provides regular and meaningful support to families trying to get by. 

We are also concerned about the hurdles this bill puts in place for families to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC has a long history of bipartisan support and a proven track record of success for families. Research shows that families mostly use the credit to pay for basic needs like groceries, rent, clothing, and school supplies. In 2023, the EITC kept 4 million people out of poverty. Evidence has shown that the credit also produces significant lifetime benefits, such as better education outcomes, improved health, and higher lifetime earnings and a more secure retirement. It is hard for many families to claim the EITC now, and 1 in 5 eligible workers don’t get the credit because it’s too hard, complicated, or expensive to file taxes. Congress should take steps to make it easier for families to get the tax credits they’ve already earned. Instead, the current plan will make families with kids jump through more hoops to access their EITC.

See above for some of our other concerns – including the failure to extend the enhanced premium tax credits that help millions of low-wage workers afford health care, and the inclusion of wasteful tax policies that undermine public education.

ATTACKS on IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES: These cuts to SNAP and other basic needs programs will be used partly for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. These new policies are wasteful, inhumane, and destructive to our communities and economy. Unprecedented levels of funding for immigration enforcement, which in conjunction with the rescinding of the sensitive locations guidance will cause immigrants to fear participating in society and allow more ICE raids at hospitals, homeless shelters, food pantries and other social service locations. This ICE funding will be used to deport people without due process, build camps to jail children indefinitely, and arrest political figures, like mayors and judges, who oppose them.

One in four children in the U.S. has an immigrant parent – and these attacks will cause long-term harm. Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022. All immigrants paid $651 billion in taxes. Immigrants work disproportionately in in-demand industries, such as agriculture, construction, and long-term care. These attacks harm the country’s badly needed workforce – and our overall economy and society.

In summary, families and communities will feel the compounding impact of cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and other health assistance along with other basic needs programs – making the combined budget package even more reckless.  That’s not good for our society or economy. Now more than ever, it’s critical that Congress protect health care, nutrition, and other essential services that help millions of families meet their basic needs. We should strengthen support for these programs — not taking them away.

A vote for the reconciliation bill is a vote for extreme and damaging cuts to SNAP, Medicaid and other health assistance, inflicting unprecedented harms.  We strongly urge you to vote no on the proposal before you this week.

Sincerely yours,

Deborah Weinstein,
Executive Director