The Senate is expected to vote on its version of the Big Brutal Bill this week and—like its House counterpart—it’s devastating for nutrition and health care programs for vulnerable communities.
The Senate proposal includes the largest cut to SNAP in history, as part of a budget package that guts basic needs programs.
The bill also contains the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, and will result in 16 million people losing their health insurance. A recent analysis of the House-passed bill found that because of the cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and reduced staffing requirements at nursing homes, 51,000 people will die each year.
Additionally, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as many as 330 rural hospitals nationwide could close or reduce services as a result of this bill. And, new research shows that cuts to Medicaid along with SNAP will reduce jobs by 1.2 million nationwide, equivalent to about a 0.8% increase in the unemployment rate.
Cutting the heart out of basic needs programs including SNAP and Medicaid doesn’t save states or the federal government money—it denies care and creates bigger problems down the road, shifting the burden to service providers, local governments, and taxpayers. This will lead to higher costs and more strain on budgets—household and state budgets alike. And it will cost lives.
It’s not too late to change course. Now more than ever, it’s critical that the Senate act to 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 take them away
Take Action
Subscribe
Donate
“There are a lot of people truly hurting… This isn’t just affecting individuals, but families, too…. You go from providing for yourself and your family and then, through no fault of your own, you can’t anymore. You send in application after application after application and sometimes you hear back but sometimes…
This week the Coalition on Human Needs released a special edition of the Human Needs Report analyzing the President’s FY2016 budget request. The report provides an overview of the White House budget with sections on taxes, revenues, and select departmental funding that most directly impact low-income and other disadvantaged populations. The…
Yesterday we partnered with MomsRising.org, MoveOn.org and more than 20 other organizations for a Twitterstorm telling Congress to #StopTheCuts to critical human needs programs in the 2016 budget. With your help and action we got #StopTheCuts trending in DC on Twitter! From the benefits of SNAP to the need for…
“Child poverty is too expensive to continue.” That’s what Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman said in unveiling their new report, Ending Child Poverty Now. Remarkably, a dramatic reduction in child poverty is not too expensive to undertake. An increase of just 2 percent of the federal budget put…
This coming Monday the President will present his budget request to Congress for FY2016. We look forward to reviewing the President’s proposals, and we’ve already heard about important investments he’d make in child care and community college. We’ve heard he will start to reverse damaging cuts to human needs programs….
On Sunday, the CBS news show 60 Minutes aired the first joint interview with Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell since the new Republican majority Congress convened. The interview took place only days after last week’s State of the Union address, and Scott Pelley…
As we noted in a recent Fact of the Week, the average annual cost of center-based child care for an infant is nearly half of the income of a family of three living at the poverty level. In fact, child care is one of the most significant expenses in a…
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama called out members of Congress who have failed to raise the minimum wage, saying, “If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to…
Below are my thoughts about the State of the Union address. Please share your comments on the address or the responses by scrolling down to the bottom of this page. The President is asking whether we will be satisfied with an economy that works only for a few, or works to provide opportunities…
Next Tuesday, President Obama will give the annual State of the Union (SOTU) address to Congress and the nation, followed by responses from the Republican Party and the Tea Party. We’ll share our thoughts about the addresses that evening on our Voices for Human Needs blog, and we hope you’ll join…
States rely heavily on money from the federal government. While taxes make up the majority of state general revenue, federal money makes up roughly 32 percent of that total. In separate reports, the National Priorities Project and the Tax Foundation both used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to come…
The House used the first week of the new Congressional session to pass a bill that puts health coverage and paychecks for Americans workers at risk and raises the federal deficit by $53 billion. That’s a Head Smacker in and of itself. But what makes this move even more of…