Resist making law of a House budget that "will cost lives"

In D.C., speakers representing women say there's never been a more important time for civil rights, economic justice and health care agendas to come together.

Union Station Thursday. Photo by Rekha Basu

Washington D.C. - On Wednesday afternoon, mere hours before the U.S. House would by a single vote approve a budget bill making staggering cuts to Medicaid and food aid for those of lower income while funneling billions into tax breaks for the wealthiest, women’s advocates inside the Library of Congress were sounding the alarm.

“The Republican cuts will cost lives,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina warned attendees at the Spring Advocacy Day gathering of the D.C.-based Gender Equity Coalition. It’s an amalgam of 120 organizations led by the National Women’s Law Center and Moms Rising (not to be confused with the school voucher-promoting, right-wing Moms for Liberty group). “There has never been a more important time for civil rights, health care and economic justice to come together.”

The GEC is devoted to gender and racial justice, economic security and immigrant rights. It just happened that the budget vote, an assault on all those priorities, took place the same night the Coalition was hosting a diverse cross section of organizations supporting women and marginalized groups from around the country.

“It’s not negotiable and none of my Democratic colleagues think it is,” declared Adams of the Republican-majority House’s bill, which still requires a vote in the Senate. President Trump officially titled it the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” but should have included the subhead: “If you’re a billionaire who wants to screw everyone else.”

“We’re marching in the streets, fighting in the courts,” said Adams.

Before the vote was taken, Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center called recent political actions “unpredecentedly awful,” adding, “I’m hopeful in my heart but I’m furious in my soul.” That hope will now need to carry into upcoming Senate votes and whatever impact protests, lawsuits and testimonials on the potential impacts could have on them.

The House voted to cut federal subsidies to Medicaid by $698 billion program and to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which provides food stamps to low-income families by $267 billion.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the House budget would help raise the federal deficit to $3.8 trillion. It would lower resources for households at the lowest one-tenth of incomes by 2 percent in 2027 and 4 percent in 2033, mostly because of cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. But the wealthiest households would see a 4 % hike in incomes in 2027 and another 2 percent in 2033, mainly because of tax cuts.

The Huse budget would also increase immigration enforcement funding by $150 billion over five years, most of that going to the Department of Homeland Security headed by Kristi Noem. It would, The Washington Post reports, “ dramatically ramp up the scale and pace of the president’s mass-deportation agenda.”

Almost every House Republican, including all four of Iowa’s, voted for the bill.

As the GEC speakers underscored, this budget will disproportionately hurt women and people of color. Calling SNAP the largest and most successful food security program in the country, Adams said all its recipients are women. In Iowa, it’s worth noting, 42 % of SNAP recipients live in rural areas. Also in Iowa, women of color have been disproportionately represented among pregnancy-related maternal deaths, making up 21% of the birthing population, but suffering 35% of the pregnancy-related deaths.

Medicaid recipients were also disproportionately represented among pregnancy-related maternal deaths (58%) compared to those covered by private insurance (42%).

Medicaid covers 41 % of childbirths in the U.S. along with the health of 39 % of children and 63 % of nursing home residents, according to the independent Kaiser Family Foundation. As for Republican favored bromides about lower-income people needing to pull their weight and go to work, 70 % of adults on Medicaid are working; 40 % are working full time.

With Headstart, childcare and elder care “under extreme attack,” these cuts and policies will undermine the economy, hurt families and cost more lives at a time when maternal morbidity is rising, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director of Moms Rising, told the meeting. And, as Adams noted, these cuts would come at a time of lower wages, unpaid labor and rising food costs.

What makes these prospective cuts to programs critical to women’s and children’s health and nutrition all the more ludicrous is that they come at a time when Trump has been pushing Natalism – getting women to have as many babies as possible. And that comes at a time when funding for reproductive health is being slashed. Separately, the Trump Administration is withholding Title X funds from Planned Parenthood to provide services to low-income and uninsured people, saying they’re not aligned with Trump’s opposition to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Also, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched an investigation of the abortion pill, mifepristone.

Speakers Wednesday didn’t spare Democratic leaders from criticism for not seizing the moment to criticize Republicans’ immigration actions, among others. Mimi Timmaraju, the president and CEO of the Reproductive Freedom for All, denounced what she called “An overarching agenda about turning back the clock on women,” which include Republican attacks on voting rights – including for women who changed their names with marriage. Adams said there had never been a more important time for civil rights, economic justice and health care to come together.

America can’t afford this House budget to become law. Now is the time to speak out against it. But in big and small ways, my trip to D.C. also revealed how resistance is building and finding a voice.

It was there in the Families Over Billionaires rally scheduled for Wednesday evening, and the three signs pictured above planted in front of a tent outside D.C.’s Union Station. It’s there in thousands of ordinary people sharing their stories of how this administration is hurting their lives. It’s there in the diligent federal judges’ rulings against presidential orders that exceed presidential authority. And with decent organizing, funding and candidates to challenge them, congressional Republicans who go along with this dreadful agenda could pay a price in next year’s midterm elections.

But this could be a long game. Fasten your seatbelts. Get ready for takeoff.

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