Editor’s note: The Coalition on Human Needs sent this letter to all members in the House of Representatives on Monday, February 24, 2025.

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 cuts to Medicaid and SNAP nutrition benefits in their forthcoming budget.

Re: H. Con. Res. 14, The FY25 Budget Resolution 

February 24, 2025 

Dear Representative: 

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 many millions of people with low incomes, seeking deep reductions inevitably in nutrition, Medicaid and other health care, education and other human needs programs. While the actual cuts to be made are underestimated in the budget resolution, the real aim is to pay for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks disproportionately benefiting the wealthy, as well as for border enforcement, detention, and deportation of immigrants.

The budget resolution specifies at least $230 billion in cuts under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, $880 billion in cuts under the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and $330 billion from the Education and Workforce Committee. These are part of an initial total of $1.5 trillion in program cuts. However, an amendment to the budget resolution would only allow the $4.5 trillion in tax breaks sought in the resolution if $2 trillion in program cuts were made. To achieve this draconian total, cuts would have to grow even deeper.

The cuts from the Agriculture Committee will certainly come largely if not entirely from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). If these cuts rise proportionally to cover the additional $500 billion called for in the budget resolution, they would exceed $300 billion. Some of the proposals to cut would reduce benefits for all of the 41 million SNAP beneficiaries; you can see how many people rely on SNAP in your district here. One particularly harsh proposal from the Republican Study Committee would slash the current very modest per-person/per-day SNAP benefit of $6.20 down to only $4.80 per person per day – such a drastic cut would slash spending by $250 billion over ten years. Studies have shown the benefits to children’s health when SNAP benefits were increased; slashing benefits at a time when food prices remain high would harm young and old alike. Cuts could also drop some people from SNAP altogether, by subjecting more people to the time limit of only three months of SNAP benefits over three years if they cannot document work. Research published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people subject to the SNAP work reporting requirements were disproportionately disabled, and lost benefits without being able to find work.

We are also deeply concerned about proposals to cut nutrition and other assistance – and efforts to disguise those cuts by shifting costs to states. The proposed “cost savings” to the Agriculture Committee equal a 20% cut to SNAP – there is no path forward in this budget resolution that does not dramatically reduce the ability of families to put food on the table. This comes at a time that many are struggling with high food, health, and housing costs.

If the Energy and Commerce Committee had to come up with a proportional share of the additional $500 billion, their total cut would rise from $880 billion to $1.17 trillion. These cuts would come from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. As recently documented by Unidos US, this massive reduction is larger than all the previous budget cuts to Medicaid combined. Even assuming “only” $880 billion in cuts, the one-year $88 billion cut is 15 times larger than the biggest previous reduction (in 2005) and will dramatically impact.

If you vote for this budget resolution, you will be voting to drastically reduce or deny Medicaid coverage for tens of millions of people nationwide. A recent poll found that 37 percent of people nationwide said either they or someone in their immediate family benefited from Medicaid (and that was true of 38 percent of Trump voters). That poll also found that more than three-quarters have a favorable view of Medicaid, compared to only 14 percent with an unfavorable view. Many people in your district rely on Medicaid (on average, just under one in four people (23.6 percent) in congressional districts are Medicaid beneficiaries). There is no way to make such a huge reduction without denying benefits to tens of millions of people.

Among the options before you are forcing Medicaid beneficiaries to document work, with the red tape required to show proof at frequent intervals expected to result in at least 36 million people losing Medicaid, even if they are working or would be exempt from work reporting requirements because of disability or caregiving responsibilities. But an earlier estimate showed that such requirements would “save” $100 billion, far less than the total sought. Other proposals to cut could scale back the number of poor people eligible for Medicaid because of the expansion made possible by the Affordable Care Act, which has added 20 million people to the Medicaid program, or could cap federal spending for Medicaid, which could also result in tens of millions of people losing Medicaid coverage. Because Medicaid costs are a shared federal-state responsibility (with the federal share averaging over 70 percent), big reductions in federal Medicaid spending will place a great burden on state budgets. States spent 18.7 percent of their budgets on Medicaid in FY24. Federal funds in that year averaged over one-third of states’ expenditures (34.3 percent), and more than half of those federal funds were for Medicaid. If you vote for this budget resolution, you will be voting for a drastic shifting of costs to your state, as well as unacceptable losses of health care for your constituents. 

In addition, the $330 billion from the Education and the Workforce Committee (which could rise to about $440 billion if they add a proportional share of the extra $500 billion called for because of the budget resolution amendment) would likely come from cutting student loan reductions or forgiveness programs and from placing more restrictions on child nutrition programs, making it more costly for millions of low-income families to cover their children’s school meals. 

These cuts are not savings – they would impose huge costs on your constituents and your state. What makes this even worse is that all this would be done to pay for tax breaks overwhelmingly favoring the wealthy. The initial targeted cuts for Medicaid and SNAP – about $1.1 trillion – would pay for the portion of the tax breaks going to the richest 1 percent. This is a glaring, unaffordable inequity that will harm your constituents as well as tens of millions of people nationwide. We need more investment in services that benefit our people, not less. Multi-millionaires, billionaires and profitable corporations do not need still more tax breaks. Extending the temporary tax breaks for individuals from the 2017 tax legislation would provide on average $45,790 for each taxpayer in the top 1 percent (with incomes of $914,900 and up); in contrast, the bottom 20 percent gains $110, while losing drastically more in health care, nutrition or education assistance. 

We also 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. The Trump administration’s recent stripping of Temporary Protected Status for 300,000 Venezuelans and reported intent to end TPS for 500,000 Haitians are examples of intent to deport people who have had legal status and are important and valued contributors to our communities.

These increases for military, homeland security, and judicial crackdowns on immigrants will also 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 the specifics of the service cuts will await the legislation to be developed by the committees with jurisdiction, you may be certain that a vote for this resolution is a vote for substantial and damaging cuts. We strongly urge you to vote no on H. Con. Res. 14 because it will require deep and harmful cuts to vital programs in order to pay for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and mass detention and deportation for immigrants. 

Sincerely yours,

Deborah Weinstein,
Executive Director – Coalition on Human Needs