Dear Colleagues,

Today, the House passed the Senate amended budget resolution, which serves as a blueprint to kick off the reconciliation process that you have likely been hearing about in the media.  This constitutes a huge threat to our communities.

Congressional Committees have been instructed to write legislation making over $5 trillion in tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy while cutting at least $1.5 trillion in health care and food assistance to working families.

A large part of the tax piece is expected to be extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts.  About half of the benefit of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts flow to the top 5% of households.  What does this look like?

  • Households with incomes in the top 1 percent (who make more than roughly $743,000 a year) would get tax cuts averaging $61,000 a year;
  • Household in the bottom 60 percent (who make roughly $96,000 or less), only get about a $400 tax cut;
  • Those tax cuts would come on top of the large tax benefits that wealthy people will receive from the 2017 law’s permanent corporate tax cuts, which are tilted even more heavily toward wealthy people than the expiring individual tax cuts.

As we know, households of color are more likely than non-Hispanic white households to have low incomes, so this tax cut extension will only serve to widen the already large income gaps between white households and those of color.

Regarding the spending cuts, Medicaid and SNAP will likely bear the brunt of it.  

The House portion directs cuts of $880 billion from the Energy and Commerce Committee—given the size of the cut it would have to come from Medicaid and possibly Medicare.  Seventy-two million people have health coverage through Medicaid–when people lose their health coverage, they lose access to preventive and primary care, care for life-threatening conditions, and chronic disease management.

  • Cuts could take many forms, capping Medicaid, Ending Expanded Medicaid, Imposing Work Requirements, Ending Health Protections, Ending Improved tax cuts—but the result is the same—people lose health care and costs increase.
  • Nearly 2 in 3 non-elderly adult Medicaid enrollees work, and most of the rest have a disability, are caring for family members, or are attending school. Real-life experience shows that denying health care coverage to people who can’t meet rigid work requirements that inevitably feature excessive red tape and paperwork won’t lead more people to work, it will just lead to more suffering.

Additionally, the House portion directs cuts of $230 billion to the Agriculture Committee—these cuts are likely to come from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, which used to be known as Food Stamps.

  • SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program. 
  • In an average month in 2024, SNAP helped an average of more than 41 million low-income people in the United States afford a nutritionally adequate diet. 
  • The federal government pays the full cost of SNAP benefits and splits the cost of administering the program with the states, which operate it.
  • Roughly 40 million people — children, parents, older adults, disabled people, workers, and other low-income people — receive food assistance from SNAP each month, including 1 in 5 children. Studies show that people who participate in SNAP are less likely to be food insecure; they also have better health and lower medical costs, and children do better in school.

This comes at a time when families will also be facing an additional burden: higher prices for many basic goods due to the tariffs that President Trump has begun to impose, which would act as a large tax increase on U.S. consumers.

We will fight to protect these critical programs and not allow our nation to be driven into trillions of dollars of debt to give tax breaks to the wealthy.  

To that end, the National Urban League has launched the Fair Budget Coalition (FBC), a group of civil rights leaders, economic justice advocates, and policy experts to advocate for a responsible federal budget that is responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans.  

Please find below the press release announcing the Coalition and highlighting a letter and request for meeting that has been sent to Congressional Leadership and the relevant Committees, and our grassroots campaign.

Should you have questions about the reconciliation process or the FBC, please feel free to reach out to Angela Ohm (copied), our Vice President of Appropriations and Advancement at aohm@nul.org.

Many thanks,

Tara

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