Trump's Disastrous Big Ugly Bill Is An Assault On The Working Poor

Marc H. Morial 
President and CEO
National Urban League

 
"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life." – Nelson Mandela
 
I invite you to take a moment and reflect on the last time you received a medical bill in the mail. Think about the times an invoice from routine bloodwork from an annual physical, or charges from a past hospital visit that weren’t fully covered by your insurance, found its way into your monthly budget and disrupted your latest travel plans or opportunities to save for your future.
 
If that resonates with you in 2025, consider yourself fortunate. For 1 in 5 Americans and almost half of the children in this country, healthcare costs are more than a minor interruption in summer plans; they are the difference between eating and going hungry, and in some cases, life or death.
 
When Senator Joni Ernst told her constituents that “we are all going to die,” in a heated town hall about the millions Americans who would lose health care coverage under the budget she supported, she wasn’t lying.  Health economists from the University of Pennsylvania estimate that the original House bill’s health provisions would lead to 51,000 preventable deaths per year.  The current Senate bill before the House increases the Medicaid cuts to over $1 trillion.
 
In the bill that passed in the Senate this week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that nearly 12 million more Americans could become uninsured by 2034. 
 
To put this into context, let’s break it down by the numbers.
 

• 71.4 million. That represents the number of Americans who enrolled in Medicaid today.
• 41%. That is the number of children in the United States who are on Medicaid as of January 2025.

The cuts in this bill have been framed as an attempt to thwart fraud in a nearly 60-year-old healthcare program, promising to make enrollees responsible for receiving coverage by enforcing new work requirements. But when 64% of current enrollees who are physically able already work full or part-time according to KFF, this rhetoric is just fodder for conservative talking heads to convince the public to support a piece of legislation that will make the top earners wealthier and force millions to choose between healthcare and the dinner table.
 
And for the 42 million Americans who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps or SNAP, they stand to lose both as this bill targets the program to pay for a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires, which will add $3.4 trillion to the national deficit by 2034.
 
Simply put. This bill isn’t just a disaster; it's an assault on the working poor.
 
According to findings from the Budget Lab at Yale, the bottom fifth of earners will see their annual after-tax incomes fall on average by 2.3 percent within the next decade, while those at the top would see about a 2.3 percent boost, as reported by the NYTimes.
 
In a nation with a workforce threatened by the rapid expansion, integration, and unregulated use of AI and automation, we cannot afford to repeal fundamental programs to help Americans get by in exchange for tax cuts for the wealthiest of us.
 
We cannot enforce policies that restrict reproductive rights from struggling families and strip them of Medicaid, when 41% of child births in this country are covered by that very program, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
This bill is another disastrous policy proposal from an administration whose agenda is full of dangerous contradictions and divisive rhetoric that continue to cost Americans their futures and their lives.
 
Now is the time to call our representatives to demand that they do not pass this bill to appease this administration and demand accountability from our state leaders in the face of a federal attack on working Americans.
 
When the National Urban League introduced our D3 framework two years ago, we committed to combating poverty through our direct services and our policy arm, which has been fighting for communities for over 100 years.
 
Now is not the time to cower in fear or submit to intimidation like so many of our so-called elected leaders do today. It is a time to stand for what is right and defend those among us who are unable to defend themselves.
 
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 26TBE 7/5/25 ▪ 80 Pine Street ▪ New York, NY 10005 ▪ (212) 558-5300

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