Budzinski on Substack: “10 Things You Might Not Know About Republicans’ Big, Ugly Bill”
WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (IL-13) published a post on the New Dem Dispatch, the New Democrat Coalition’s Substack, detailing some of the lesser-known consequences of Congressional Republicans’ Big, Ugly Bill.
In the post, Budzinski discusses the sweeping impacts of the bill on the healthcare industry, food assistance, working families’ bank accounts, American jobs, and public safety.
Congresswoman Budzinski serves as Vice Chair for Policy of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of 115 center-left House Democrats committed to breaking through gridlock to deliver results for Americans.
Read the full post on the New Dem Dispatch here, and below:
10 Things You Might Not Know About Republicans’ Big, Ugly Bill
By Rep. Nikki Budzinski
Last week, Congressional Republicans forced through one of the worst and most harmful bills in American history. For months, Democrats have joined the American people – who oppose this legislation 2 to 1 – in laying out the catastrophic impacts of the Big Ugly Bill, from healthcare and food assistance cuts to billionaire tax breaks and mountains of federal debt.
I recognize that despite our many rallies, statements, speeches, videos, and more, we often fail to capture the astonishing breadth of the bill’s attacks on every facet of American life. So this is an effort to shine a light on some of the things you might not have heard about the Big, Ugly Bill, and how it could impact you, your family, your community, and every American.
- It’s not just Medicaid, but all healthcare.
Americans who rely on the ACA and Medicare for health care will also lose coverage.
When it comes to the more than $1 trillion in cuts to healthcare programs in the tax scam bill, much of the attention has rightfully focused on the devastating impacts on Medicaid recipients. The $793 billion in Medicaid cuts will rip healthcare from more than 8 million Americans, but that’s only a portion of the 17 million Americans who will lose their insurance.
The rest of that figure accounts for the 4 million Americans who will become uninsured due to the gutting of the Affordable Care Act marketplace, and the 4.2 million Americans who will lose coverage because the bill ends the premium tax credit enhancements made in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2020.
This terrible bill also takes a hatchet to Medicare, something Republicans are trying to sweep under the rug. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects nearly 1.4 million low-income people with Medicare will lose their Medicare Savings Program (MSP) coverage due to increased red tape.
It will push a stunning 5.4 million more Americans into medical debt, disproportionately impacting middle-class families and burdening households with as much as $22,800 in additional debt. And it will severely impact the ability of hospitals around the country to treat patients; the American Hospital Association warns the bill will “force hospitals to make service line reductions and staff reductions, resulting in longer waiting times in emergency departments and for other essential services, and could ultimately lead to facility closures.”
- Food assistance cuts could wipe SNAP off the map in dozens of states.
Shifting benefit costs to states will force many to shut down SNAP entirely, not just make it harder for families to get these benefits.
The $200 billion worth of cuts to America’s most successful anti-hunger effort – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – will cut benefits and raise costs for the more than 40 million Americans who rely on the program every month to put food on the table.
But the damage doesn’t stop there. Under current rules, the federal government covers 100 percent of the cost of food benefits, with states in turn paying 50 percent of the costs to administer the program. However, built into the Republican budget cuts is a seismic shift in cost-sharing that could force states to pay 15 percent of the cost of food benefits.
The consequences of this additional burden on state budgets are disastrous, and many states could be forced to cut off SNAP benefits to their residents entirely, ripping food from the mouths of tens of millions of Americans.
In a letter to Congressional leadership, the governors of 23 states laid out the stakes in clear terms: “If states cannot meet the full cost share, they will need to cut SNAP enrollment or end their program entirely… The combination of massive cost increase to states, the unpredictability of how much a state will be on the hook for from year to year, and the need for states to balance their budgets creates a significant risk that states have to leave SNAP altogether.”
- Hundreds of rural hospitals are at risk of shutting down.
330+ at-risk rural hospitals that rely on Medicaid funding to survive will have to close their doors, putting more Americans at risk in addition to massive job losses.
Healthcare in rural America is already in dire straits. Rural hospitals often face unique challenges when compared to hospitals in population centers – they face higher marginal costs due to servicing fewer patients, often cannot provide specialized services, and are frequently under-resourced. That’s a big reason why nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed in the past 20 years.
Importantly, rural hospitals also treat a higher proportion of Medicaid patients, and therefore have the most to lose when faced with Republicans’ budget cuts. If these cruel cuts went into effect, 338 rural hospitals – 20% of all rural hospitals in the country – already in financial distress will be at risk of shutting down entirely. This would not only impact healthcare in underserved areas, but would lead to massive job losses in communities that rely heavily on the healthcare industry.
- One in four nursing homes is at risk of closing, putting our nation’s seniors out in the cold.
Nursing homes are sounding the alarm that this bill will force staff cuts and closures because of the Medicaid cuts in the bill, putting our nation’s grandparents and seniors at risk during their most vulnerable years.
A bombshell study by the American Health Care Association (AHCA) revealed the sweeping impacts the Big, Ugly Bill’s Medicaid cuts will have on nursing homes and seniors nationwide.
Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care services for seniors in the country and provides the overwhelming majority of funding for nursing homes that often operate on razor-thin margins. The AHCA study concluded that nearly 60% of nursing homes could be forced to fire staff after budget cuts and that 27% of nursing homes could be forced to shut down. As demand for long-term care services for seniors continues to rise, the impacts of Medicaid cuts on the nursing home industry could be catastrophic for America’s seniors.
- Electric bills will skyrocket.
Repealing clean energy tax credits will make energy less reliable and more expensive for families.
While much attention is paid to healthcare and nutrition assistance cuts in the Big, Ugly Bill, the legislation will also deal a massive blow to American clean energy by going after the generational clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), killing investments in domestic manufacturing and damaging American innovation, energy security, and the climate. According to a Rhodium Group analysis, clean energy installations could plummet by up to 72 percent over the next decade, forcing a reliance on fossil fuels and seriously impacting our clean energy future.
This isn’t just a long-term issue: consumers will immediately experience a significant spike in the cost of electricity. Hardworking families are already dealing with increasingly expensive electric bills; over the past three years, the average bill has increased by $22 every month and continues to rise. But instead of lowering the price of energy, Republicans’ repeal of the IRA tax credits is estimated to raise the average annual electricity bill by an additional $110 in 2026, a figure that increases to $400 per year over the next five years. And the most impacted states could see prices rise by an astonishing 30 percent by 2029.
- Millions of construction jobs are on the chopping block.
Gutting the clean energy industry will shut down projects that generate millions of jobs.
Republicans are plotting to gut the clean energy industry, full stop. The North American Building Trade Unions (NABTU) dubbed this legislation “the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” because these cuts won’t only impact the climate, electricity prices, and energy security, but take jobs away from the hardworking Americans who are ready and willing to build the clean energy technologies of the future.
NABTU estimates that a staggering 1.75 million construction jobs are threatened by the bill, which translates to $148 billion of wage and benefits losses every year. Put simply, millions of Americans will lose their jobs – on top of potentially losing their healthcare and their food benefits – so Republicans can finance tax breaks for the wealthiest billionaires.
- The bill defunds reproductive healthcare clinics across the country.
Hundreds of clinics could be forced to shut down, jeopardizing access to reproductive care.
Republicans’ ongoing war on reproductive healthcare continues in this bill through a provision that prevents Planned Parenthood clinics from providing non-abortion services to Medicaid patients – that means STI tests, cervical cancer screenings, and contraception.
Not only will this legislation put the care of more than 1 million patients at risk, but it could shut down nearly 200 clinics nationwide (1 in 4 abortion providers in America), 90 percent of which are located in states where abortion is legalized. Republicans are doing everything they can to strip life-saving healthcare away from those in need through what amounts to a backdoor ban on abortion nationwide.
- The bill deregulates deadly weapons, making it easier to buy silencers, short-barrel rifles.
A GOP provision eliminates a $200 tax on silencers and sawed-off rifles and shotguns.
Gun violence is a plague that infects every American community. In just the past few weeks, we have witnessed the assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home, and most recently the deadly ambush of first responders in Idaho that claimed the lives of two firefighters.
Yet at a time when Congress should be taking up common sense gun control reforms, Republicans are trying to jam through more dangerous deregulations. They propose eliminating a $200 tax on gun silencers and a similar fee for sawed-off rifles and shotguns, making it easier for bad actors to get their hands on deadly firearms.
- This legislation is the most regressive tax bill in a half-century.
The trillions of dollars in tax cuts mean the ultra-wealthy will see their incomes increase while low-income households lose income.
The Republicans’ Big, Ugly Bill is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and the young to the old in American history. The bill includes $4.45 trillion in tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, financed in part by trillions in cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs and paid for by future generations who will be burdened by more than $3 trillion in added federal debt.
Breaking down the distribution of the $4.45 trillion in tax cuts demonstrates how this bill gives to the rich and takes from the poor. The top 10% of earners in the country, those households making more than $692,000 per year, will see their incomes increase by 2.3%, an average of $12,044 annually, while the top 0.1% of earners who make more than $3 million annually will receive a $100,000 windfall every year.
Meanwhile, the bottom 10% of earners, households barely getting by making less than $22,868 annually, will see their net household income decrease by $1,600 every year. All told, this legislation is the most regressive tax bill in the past 40 years, and likely the most regressive in American history.
- The cost of these billionaire tax cuts will be felt for generations.
The legislation will add $4 trillion to the federal deficit, making it one of the least fiscally responsible pieces of legislation in modern history.
This Big Ugly Bill is also a Big Bankruptcy Bill.
Despite Republicans’ efforts to gut trillions of dollars in federal funding to pay for their tax cuts, this legislation will still add more than $4,000,000,000,000 to the federal deficit over the next 10 years. This number only becomes larger if the changes made in this bill become permanent, and accounts for the additional debt incurred from the increase in interest rates (costing a whopping $700 billion) caused such a shocking increase to our deficit.
This level of deficit spending is nearly unprecedented in American history, will burden the American people for generations, and further cements Republicans as the party of wasteful spending – not fiscal responsibility.
After slashing more than $1 trillion from essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP, the legislation doesn’t even get close to paying for itself. All to give tax cuts to billionaires. Shameful.
###