June 3, 2025
Dear friend,
In today’s The News-Gazette, you can see the Guest Commentary that I wrote about the House Republican’s Budget bill and the cuts to Medicaid and other health and food programs.
You can read my commentary below, or you can find it on The News-Gazette’s website here.
Don’t believe political spin about not-so-beautiful bill
House Republicans narrowly passed their budget bill – the cartoonishly named “One Big Beautiful Bill” – that would slash funding for Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). These cuts would force around 15 million Americans off their health coverage, and raise healthcare costs for millions more, all in order to permanently fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.
This budget bill was rushed through overnight, and while House Republicans admit this is one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in a generation, they voted for it without getting a full analysis of the proposal or holding a single hearing on the impacts of the biggest cut to Medicaid ever. Even without a full accounting yet, we know enough to know that the consequences will be devastating – from millions more uninsured, to increased premiums and co-pays, and more bureaucratic barriers to get and stay on coverage, to reduced benefits and scaled back services resulting from cuts to the hospitals, clinics and other providers on which we all rely.
The Senate has millions of reasons to reject this approach to a budget bill. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in a New York Times op-ed that slashing health care for the working poor “is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.” He stated “Republicans need to open their eyes: Our voters support social insurance programs,” Hawley wrote. “More than that, our voters depend on those programs.”
No one campaigned on the biggest reduction of health coverage in history, nor on massive Medicaid cuts, nor on cuts to the ACA or Medicare, nor on higher health premiums and co-payments, nor on cuts to the SNAP food assistance program — but that’s what House Republicans voted for in this budget.
This isn’t a political game — this is literally life and death for low-income working families, people with disabilities, pregnant women and their babies, children, veterans, and people who rely on rural hospitals across the country — all of whom will pay the price of this disastrous bill for generations, while the billionaires reap the benefits.
