Editor’s note: CHN sent the letter below to the all members of the U.S Senate on June 30, 2025.

Dear Senator:

On behalf of the Coalition on Human Needs, I strongly urge you to reject the Senate budget reconciliation package before you this evening.  We have already shared other detailed letters about our concerns about cuts to basic needs programs, specifically focused on Medicaid and health coverage and SNAP, and we outline some of our reasons opposing this package including other harmful policies below.

At the outset, we urge you to consider the serious consequences of this unprecedented shifting of resources away from people with low and moderate incomes to those with very high incomes while increasing the debt, and to stop the headlong rush to pass this legislation by an artificial deadline.  In particular, reporting indicates we are barreling towards a last-minute substitute designed to appease objections in the House – with even less transparency or ability to analyze the impacts.

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 strongly oppose the Senate package given the historic cuts and structural changes to SNAP, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with the overall impact of this package – the Senate budget bill will raise costs and take other assistance from people with low incomes with harsh reductions in the Child Tax Credit, support for public K-12 education and access to higher education, consumer protections, green energy credits to address the climate crisis, and other human needs programs.

Medicaid and SNAP are not just line items in a budget ―they are lifelines 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 by providing health coverage and food assistance in every state. The combined cuts to basic needs programs are well over  $1.2 trillion according to the CBO. Recent polling shows widespread opposition to cutting SNAP and Medicaid along with other basic needs programs, with 4 out of 5 registered voters including nearly 60% of Republicans, 88% of Independents, and 92% of Democrats opposing cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. 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.

We note that millions of people with low incomes will lose access to basic needs programs all to give $4.45 trillion in tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations – with the size of these unfair tax provisions meaning the Senate package adds about $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit vs. $2.4 trillion in the House bill. With many struggling with higher costs, gutting basic needs programs to fund new tax breaks for wealthy individuals and large corporations is hard to understand. Extending expiring tax provisions mean that, the top 1% of wealthy individuals gain a $65,000 tax cut on average and the top 0.1% will get an estimated $252,000, while most families will only be getting about a dollar a day. On the whole in the Senate bill, 69 percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 10 percent would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and about 1 percent would go to the poorest fifth. Some egregious examples: the cost of exempting even more multi-million-dollar estates from the estate tax is estimated at $200 billion, and another over-the-top windfall allows corporations to deduct their research and experimentation expenses immediately and to take a retroactive break back to 2022, at a cost of $141 billion over 10 years. We urge you to review ITEP’s state data and Americans for Tax Fairness’ Opposition Letter for more.

Approximately 1 in 3 children nationwide, living in communities across the country, would not receive the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) because their families make TOO LITTLE money―an average of $23,000 a year – and over 2.6 million citizen children (see data on how many children from your state) along with 1.3 million children with Individual Tax Identification Numbers lose out on the CTC altogether.

This bill undermines public K-12 education by creating a new, national voucher program that doubles as a tax shelter for the wealthy. It’s an attack on public education that would give away billions of federal taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers instead of directing resources to the public schools that 90% of American children attend. In addition to undermining public schools, the research shows that vouchers don’t improve academic achievement, go largely to families who can already afford private school, and take away rights and protections that students are guaranteed at public schools, such as the rights for students with disabilities included in the IDEA. Congress should not be wasting billions of dollars creating new methods for the ultra-wealthy to evade paying their fair share.

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, would be a shameful turn away from the work of government to sustain and build an economy that works for all of us  Should this be enacted and implemented, the harmful consequences will be felt for a very long time.

The Medicaid funding cut proposed is at least four times the size of any previous cut in history. CBO’s latest projections show that this legislative package would kick 11.8 million people off their health insurance by cutting health coverage over $1 trillion, and since another 4.2 million Americans would lose health coverage because this bill allows the ACA enhanced premium tax credits to expire and 900,000 more lose coverage from other changes to the ACA marketplaces, the overall number of uninsured people resulting from the Senate bill is nearly 17 million — more than the 16 million whom CBO found would lose coverage under the House bill. This will have a substantial impact on the health system as a whole, and these could lead to a substantial 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 have deep concerns about the impact of this budget package 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). Proposed Medicaid cuts could cost states $201.3 billion over ten years with reduced flexibility along with federal funding for states to finance their Medicaid programs. Including Sen. Scott’s amendment in the final Senate bill would shift an additional $93 billion in federal Medicaid costs to states 2031-2034 (and could mean an additional 10.6 million people could lose Medicaid coverage). Researchers have found that more than 300 rural hospitals would be at disproportionate risk of closing, reducing services, or ending inpatient care, and the latest proposals to delay implementation of the provider tax and add a $25 billion rural hospital fund fall far short of the needs. The Senate package will decimate rural communities and many others while shifting costs to states at a level even more severe than the House-passed version, which is why many senators are hearing loud and clear from governors and state officials opposed to this budget package while House members are voicing their opposition to the Senate’s Medicaid cuts.

These deep cost shifts come on top of the Senate Agriculture Committee proposal to cut $186 billion from SNAP, the largest cut to SNAP in history, which includes a new and radical proposal to shift the cost of SNAP benefits to the states for the first time. Most states will be forced to cover 5-15 percent of the federal funding for SNAP benefits going to families in the state (noting that these new costs could cause states to opt out of participating in SNAP completely). Deep cuts to basic needs programs including massive cost shifts to states can have ripple effects and far-reaching unintended consequences. For example, this past week Gov. Abbott of Texas vetoed funding for summer feeding programs because of fears and uncertainty around the additional cost-burden due to this budget package (for more, see: FRAC Warns Cuts to SNAP Will Negatively Impact Child Nutrition Programs). State investments in other basic needs programs – K-12 education, mental health and substance use disorder services, child welfare, public safety, and much more – could be on the chopping block, as states grapple with choosing which vital services to cut. We also want to note that cuts to Medicaid and SNAP could mean 7.5 million children lose access to school meals and families with young children lose access to WIC.

We know that the cuts and paperwork requirements proposed will deny health care and food assistance to people who need it. CHN strongly opposes penalizing people facing job losses by taking away Medicaid and SNAP through harsh work reporting requirements that ensnarl people in bureaucratic red tape — taking away basic nutrition and 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. The Senate goes farther than the House by removing the exemption for parents of children over age 14 to document their work in order to receive SNAP and Medicaid. 900,000 parents living in every state with children over 13 years old are at risk of losing SNAP after just 3 months – which means less food on the table for families with 900,000 school-aged children nationwide, including many children from your state. The Senate proposal even removes exemptions for 270,000 veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and former foster youth put in place in the 2023 debt ceiling deal. 160,000 to 380,000 additional Medicaid enrollees could lose their health coverage due to red tape – part of the millions losing coverage in every state because of “job loss penalties.” We want to underscore that the red-tape denials that will occur because of work reporting rules will ensnare many people who are actually eligible:  people who are working or who are exempt because of disability or having a young child, but do not manage to supply documentation.  Evidence shows that millions of eligible Medicaid and SNAP participants, including children and people with disabilities, could lose coverage with complicated and frequent eligibility checks along with other paperwork requirements.

Breaking a longstanding bipartisan tradition, the Senate budget proposal bars lawfully present refugees, asylees, victims of trafficking and domestic violence, and others from receiving SNAP and Medicaid along with Medicare, ACA marketplace coverage, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), breaking with guidelines in place dating from 1996. Current policy limits eligibility for Medicaid and 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 health coverage, but the five-year bar does not apply to children, refugees, survivors of domestic violence or trafficking, and certain other humanitarian immigrants. The House bill includes extremely harsh new eligibility restrictions to Medicare and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies that will leave more than 1.3 million lawfully present people in our nation uninsured, and the Senate plan incorporates the House bill’s restrictions and adds them to Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — taking away federal funding for these programs if states use them to cover people in the newly excluded immigration categories.  CBO estimates 100,000-250,000 people, including an estimated 50,000 children, would lose food benefits entirely. Because people without a documented status are already ineligible for these federally-funded supports, the federal savings come from taking help away from people here lawfully. All other immigrants, including humanitarian immigrants, would be ineligible – and this move to take food assistance and health care away from legal immigrants will reduce health outcomes for their families, which often include U.S. citizen children.

Voters are deeply concerned about rising costs, but the Senate budget package disallows future adjustments to SNAP benefits based on the cost of an updated nutritious food package (and what many families experience in their local grocery stores), making it even tougher for families to put food on the table. Many of the millions of families who will lose health coverage and SNAP, or face higher health and grocery costs, are left out of other tax policies that should be focused on supporting families including the expanded CTC (see above).

Higher education costs will go up; this bill also makes college more costly by cutting $300 billion in college affordability. This includes taking away the most affordable student loan repayment plan, costing the typical college graduate almost $3000 more per year in loan payments; taking away access to federal student loans from many graduate students, effectively cutting off access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness for most public service workers with a graduate degree; and taking away protections for defrauded students, making it easier for predatory colleges to scam students and get away with it. By dismantling income-driven repayment plans, the Senate budget leaves borrowers with expensive, inflexible loan payments. Eliminating these programs would disproportionately affect public servants and overburdened borrowers, including Black women, who hold the highest average student loan debt. Veterans and disabled borrowers eligible for loan discharge would also be impacted. Without these protections, millions of families could be pushed into financial hardship, deepening economic disparities.

In addition, the Senate bill proposes a nearly 50 percent cut to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding, severely limiting its ability to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive and abusive practices. Without adequate resources, the agency’s enforcement of consumer protection and civil rights laws would worsen further. The bill also rolls back Inflation Reduction Act clean energy programs, likely raising energy costs that would hit low-income households the hardest. We’re in the middle of a climate crisis and many families are already struggling with high energy costs. Passing policies that make clean energy programs more expensive, losing hundreds of thousands of good jobs,  and increasing energy costs for millions of people is completely unacceptable.

These cuts to basic needs programs and policies that will increase costs for everyday Americans will be used partly to fund seizures of people without due process, and will fund family separation, 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 allow more ICE raids at hospitals, homeless shelters, food pantries and other social service locations, and will cause immigrants to fear participating in society. One in four children in the U.S. has an immigrant parent and 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.

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 will deny health care and other basic needs to people who need it – including those who are eligible for these programs. We are deeply concerned that the combination of uncertainty over tariffs and deep cuts to food assistance and health care will increase the number of families struggling to make ends meet, who will face the loss of jobs, rising prices, and signs of economic downturn. When families suffer 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. We all want a more efficient government.

In summary, families and communities will feel the compounding impact of cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and with other basic needs programs coupled with tax breaks that drain resources from lower-income families to give tax breaks to the wealthy  – 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 the Senate acts 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.

It is not too late to change course. We lament the rushed nature of deliberation on this mammoth budget proposal – and the dangers of fast-tracking huge budget legislation without time for Senators and their staff to understand how extreme and damaging structural program changes and historic cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will inflict unprecedented harms.  We strongly urge you to reject the Senate budget package and urge Leadership along with colleagues to instead strengthen basic needs programs and protect your constituents who depend on them.

Sincerely yours,

Deborah Weinstein,
Executive Director