The Senate is expected to vote on its version of the Big Brutal Bill this week and—like its House counterpart—it’s devastating for nutrition and health care programs for vulnerable communities.
The Senate proposal includes the largest cut to SNAP in history, as part of a budget package that guts basic needs programs.
The bill also contains the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, and will result in 16 million people losing their health insurance. A recent analysis of the House-passed bill found that because of the cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and reduced staffing requirements at nursing homes, 51,000 people will die each year.
Additionally, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as many as 330 rural hospitals nationwide could close or reduce services as a result of this bill. And, new research shows that cuts to Medicaid along with SNAP will reduce jobs by 1.2 million nationwide, equivalent to about a 0.8% increase in the unemployment rate.
Cutting the heart out of basic needs programs including SNAP and Medicaid doesn’t save states or the federal government money—it denies care and creates bigger problems down the road, shifting the burden to service providers, local governments, and taxpayers. This will lead to higher costs and more strain on budgets—household and state budgets alike. And it will cost lives.
It’s not too late to change course. Now more than ever, it’s critical that the Senate act to protect health care, nutrition, and other essential services that help millions of families meet their basic needs. We should strengthen support for these programs—not take them away
The vaccinations and racial inequality edition. This week, the U.S. crossed an important hurdle in the fight against COVID-19. For the first time, the number of Americans receiving a COVID-19 vaccine exceeds the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. throughout the entire pandemic. But a trove of data released this week shows extreme racial disparities in who is getting the vaccine. White Americans are being vaccinated at rates close to four times as high as Black Americans in Pennsylvania and Florida, even though Black residents in these states are more than twice as likely to die from COVID as white residents. There is no reliable national data.
Some of the latest actions from the Biden administration tackle one of the starkest departures between the current and the previous President — racial equality and xenophobia. Biden issued a series of executive orders addressing long-standing systemic racism, including in areas such as education, housing, and criminal justice. One of these executive orders addresses an unnerving statistic; hate crimes in America rose to the highest level in more than a decade in the past year and the target is overwhelmingly Asian Americans.
President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief proposal, known as the “American Rescue Plan” would prevent millions of working families from falling even deeper into poverty. It is desperately needed, because the COVID-recession has resulted in millions of low-income workers losing their jobs, working fewer hours and having to stay home to care for children out of school due to the pandemic.
The K-shaped recovery edition. COVID-19 daily infections are down over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations are down. Deaths are down, slightly. Vaccinations are on the rise – more than 21 million Americans have received their first shot, and the rolling average of shots per day has climbed to over one million. All of which is encouraging news. But the economic news is not so encouraging. New information out this week confirms what many have feared: we are experiencing a K-shaped recovery. The top end of the economy continues to improve while lower earners fall farther and farther behind.
Congress will soon be thick in the debate over whether to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, known as the American Rescue Plan, or something like it, or something smaller. Opponents are fearful of the size of the package – and let us be clear: $1.9 trillion is a lot of money. But proponents of aggressive stimulus say that is precisely the point. We must go big – or our economic recovery will be far slower than it needs to be. And as we’ve experienced in the past, those with the lowest incomes – disproportionately people of color, families with children, and people with disabilities – will have to wait the longest to see an upturn.
CHN just released another edition of the Human Needs Report. Read on for the latest on President Biden’s COVID-19 relief package and sweeping immigration bill, power struggles in the Senate, and more.
The 100 million vaccinations in 100 days edition. President Biden plans a vigorous response to the coronavirus pandemic. He has proposed a sweeping national plan to make tests and vaccines more abundant, make schools and travel safer, and help states pay for efforts to control the virus. Biden’s strategy includes aggressive use of executive authority to protect workers, advance racial equity, and ramp up the manufacturing of test kits, vaccines, and related supplies. The President envisions the creation of mass vaccination sites, including in stadiums, gyms, and community centers, along with a program to build the public health workforce to help with testing, contact tracing, and outreach.
We welcome President Biden and Vice President Harris with high emotion. We are grieving many losses: people lost to the coronavirus, people lost to racist violence, to too many guns, to overdose, to suicide. President Biden understands our grief and is committed to presiding over a government that strives to lessen its causes. We celebrate President Biden’s swift actions to combat the four intertwined crises of pandemic, economy, systemic racism, and climate. Members of the Coalition on Human Needs are ready to join Americans nationwide to support and advance this essential work.
Eliza Navarro, a nurse in San Benito, Texas didn’t want to leave her job back in April. But when she couldn’t find child care for her two children, home from school because of COVID-19, she felt she had no choice. Like many working mothers, she has felt the pandemic’s blow to America’s already fragile and dysfunctional child care system.
The it’s-always-darkest-before-the-dawn edition. On Thursday, January 14, 238,390 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed – up 27 percent from two weeks prior. An additional 3,973 deaths were reported – up 39 percent from two weeks ago (but down from 4,400 reported on Tuesday, January 12). The national COVID-19 death toll is approaching 400,000. Still, hope is on the horizon in two forms. First, President-elect Biden Thursday evening announced a robust proposal to corral COVID-19 and resurrect our sputtering economy. Also: after a sluggish rollout, reports suggest that the number of vaccines administered daily is on the rise. As of late this week, 28 states plus D.C. were offering the vaccine to Americans 65 years of age and older.
“With COVID-19 cases surging and U.S. deaths approaching 400,000, President-Elect Biden is meeting our national emergency with caring and determination. His American Rescue Plan has the necessary scope to halt our current decline and protect millions from hardship and harm. The President-Elect and his team have done the clear-eyed analysis to know that we cannot free ourselves of this combined health and economic disaster without ramping up an ambitious schedule of vaccinations and disease prevention alongside a robust package to help our people meet basic needs
Yesterday, we witnessed a shocking act of domestic terrorism that should shake every one of us to our core. At this moment, we can be nothing less than honest about what we saw. A conspiracy-crazed mob, incited by lies championed by the 45th President of the United States — at a rally organized to disrupt the solemn last step in the constitutional process of validating the federal election — invaded our sacred seat of American democracy, the People’s House – the United States Capitol building.
