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
The Medicaid unwinding edition. Early in the pandemic, Congress gave states more Medicaid money to address COVID-19. In return, states were not allowed to drop people from their Medicaid rolls. That ends tomorrow. Beginning April 1, five states – Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire, and South Dakota – will start ending Medicaid coverage for those who have not demonstrated their continued eligibility. Almost every other state will follow in May, June, or July. And by roughly one year from now, millions will have lost access to health care.
President Biden joined past and present leaders in Congress and health care advocates throughout the country this week in marking the 13th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The White House’s celebration of the ACA’s birthday on Thursday was a two-pronged effort that focused both on the law’s success – more Americans have access to health care than ever before – and on threats to its well-being
“The union is not some third-party entity that makes decisions for people, the union is the workers.” This is what the vice president of a local union in Orlando, Florida told me the first time I met him as he recruited me to help the food service workers at my private college in a wealthy suburb of Orlando. Prior to meeting him, I knew nothing about unions and was in the dark about the way the college’s food supplier treated its workers.
At a recent rally near the base of the Washington Monument, immigrant advocates gathered to demand that the Biden Administration back off its plans to institute an asylum ban for many applicants as well as a possible return to the practice of family detention, frequently used during the Trump era.
The show us your budget edition. President Budget released his budget proposal last week. Broadly speaking, it is based on four values: lowering costs for families, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, investing in America, and reducing the deficit, all made possible by ensuring that the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations pay more of their fair share.
Biden’s commonsense budget proposal takes strong moves forward to level the grossly unequal economic playing field in this country. It shores up tattered programs for poor, low-income, and middle-income American families, no matter what we look like or where we live. As an expression of values, its proposals to invest in families and workers, protect Social Security and strengthen Medicare reflect the values of most of us.
Every weekday during the semester, I wake up by 8 a.m. to get ready for class at my small, primarily white, liberal arts college in the wealthy Orlando suburb that is Winter Park. Once I step out of my apartment, my first destination is the on-campus café where I pick up my Chai Latte on the way to class. The young woman that works the morning shift on weekdays knows all of us students by name and always remembers my order. Despite all that she does to make my campus a welcoming environment for me, I had never considered what it was like for her as a food service worker at a private university. It wasn’t until I learned of a union organizing effort among cafeteria workers that I realized the need for reform.
A 26-year-old man with severe open wounds on both legs is injecting fentanyl three days a day. A 22-year-old woman injection drug user just found out her boyfriend with whom she shares needles tested positive for HIV and hepatitis C. Two 14-year-old boys in Utah buy online what they think is Adderall; the counterfeit pills are really fentanyl and they die within hours after swallowing the pills. Americans saw 110,315 fatal drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in March 2022 — 294 deaths per day.
The Biden budget makes right and responsible choices: less poverty, more jobs, investments that help workers, families, and children, and more economic security for older Americans. It translates moral clarity about the need for shared prosperity into dollars and cents.
Rare, bipartisan agreement broke out in a Senate subcommittee hearing this week when Democrats, Republicans, and both conservative and progressive economists agreed that the U.S. must avoid defaulting on its debt later this year.
All of us at the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) are deeply saddened at the passing of Karen Hobert Flynn, President of Common Cause. She was a tireless fighter for democracy.
