CHN sent this letter to all Senators, asking them to reject the budget resolution which will pave the way for deep cuts to food assistance and health care, turbocharge family separation and mass deportation, and set the stage for huge tax breaks that benefit the wealthy.

Your organization are welcome to sample the language in your own letter. If you are not affiliated with any organizations, you can still take action by sending a message to members of Congress right now demanding they reject the budget resolution.

April 4, 2025

Dear Senator:

On behalf of the Coalition on Human Needs, I strongly urge you to vote NO on the FY 2025 Budget Resolution (H.Con.Res.14), now before you.

The Coalition on Human Needs is made up of human service providers, faith groups, policy experts, and civil rights, labor, and other organizations concerned with meeting the needs of people with low incomes.  The budget resolution you are considering sets in motion a process that will take assistance away from people with low incomes, seeking harsh reductions inevitably in nutrition, Medicaid and other health care, education and other human needs programs.

This budget resolution paves the way for Congress to fast-track deep cuts via the reconciliation process that will harm our communities for years to come. While the language and savings of the Senate budget resolution are vague, it will allow the House and Senate to proceed with specific and harsh health care and nutrition cuts—a dangerous open door that senators should reject. This budget resolution paves the way for more than $1 trillion in cuts to SNAP, child nutrition, and Medicaid—which will result in tens of millions of low-income people losing their health care and nutrition benefits. Families are frightened they will lose their ability to feed their children and ensure they stay healthy, while deep cuts could put higher education out of reach for them because they will lose financial assistance and many worry about the impact on our environment as programs to protect against climate change are slashed.

Many in our networks are concerned about the impact of new tariffs on household costs—and combined with potential deep cuts to food assistance and health care, this is setting up huge uncertainty in the economy with more families struggling to make ends meet, facing the loss of jobs, rising prices, and a potential recession. This would make the deep cuts in SNAP and Medicaid even more reckless and Congress should say no.

While the actual cuts to be made are disguised in the budget resolution, it is clear they will be used partly for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, at a cost of $350 billion combined between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. We strongly oppose the budget resolution’s committing of vast sums for the rounding up of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn, as wasteful, inhumane, and destructive of our communities and economy. Many mixed status families are already afraid to send their children to school because of the increased immigration enforcement in our communities and the Trump administration’s rescission of the long-standing policy limiting immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions. Even more extreme anti-immigration enforcement efforts will cause even more chaos, fear and family disruptions in our communities. The administration’s abuse of wartime authority to disappear individuals from the U.S. should be a wake-up call for all of us – paving the way to target all those seen as “enemies,” citizens and noncitizens alike. This is a vote to create massive slush funds for mass deportations and detention paid for by taking health care and food aid away from families.

We also have concerns about large increases in funding for Defense, often a slush fund for wasteful Pentagon contractors at the expense of programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and education programs. Trillions of dollars spent―and unaccounted for―undermines our security by preventing us from investing in the shared prosperity that comes from more housing, climate and public health protections, ending hunger, improving access to care, and more education. Much of this additional funding will also go towards paying for private prisons and detention centers used for family separation and mass deportations―and the corporations who own those prisons are seeing their profits soar. These increases for Pentagon contracts, homeland security, and judicial crackdowns on immigrants will be paid for by hundreds of billions in cuts to health care, nutrition and education, cuts that will increase hardship, place health at risk, and deny opportunity for millions of people.

While trying disguise how much could be cut from areas like Medicaid, SNAP, and education, we note that policymakers are trying to mask the true deficit impact of this budget plan, hiding the $3.8 trillion cost of extending the 2017 tax provisions, by attempting to use a “current policy” budget baseline in a sharp departure from traditional budget standards. Regardless of the gimmicks in this plan, this budget paves the way for Congress to move forward trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from programs like SNAP and Medicaid that will potentially raise the cost of groceries for millions of families who need support and take health care away from many.

During floor consideration of amendments in the coming hours, please support all amendments that undo the damage of this budget plan – including those that remove or reduce the harm of Medicaid and SNAP cuts, undo efforts to turbocharge family separation and mass deportation, protect essential programs like the Social Services Block Grant that support children, families, and seniors, etc. Please do not support any amendments that could deepen the harm of this proposal. Given what is at stake, we urge you to pursue a thorough debate that highlights all the harmful policy changes that will come out of this proposal.

Despite the masking of the extent of the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, education and other vital services in the Senate’s budget resolution, you may be certain that a vote for this resolution is a vote for extreme and damaging cuts.  We strongly urge you to vote no on H.Con.Res.14 given it will require deep and harmful cuts to vital programs in order to lavish tax breaks on the wealthy along with harmful mass detention and deportation.

Sincerely yours,

Deborah Weinstein,
Executive Director