President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is downright ugly when it comes to education, health care and hunger, social justice advocates said during a webinar hosted by Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
The gigantic budget measure now before the U.S. Senate would provide $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for wealthy Americans, increase the federal deficit by $4 trillion and give billions to private religious and secular schools while inflicting deep cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the SNAP food assistance program.
Sabrina Dent
“This budget is a punch to the gut of working Americans and working people across this country,” said Sabrina Dent, director of the BJC Center for Faith Justice and Reconciliation.
Dent said she was opening the June 16 discussion not as a policy expert or religious freedom advocate but as a hardworking, taxpaying single mother who has had to lean on Medicaid and SNAP to care for her son who attends public schools.
“I know what a bill like this means for families like mine, including many grocery store employees, sanitation workers, educators, daycare workers, nurses, Uber and Lyft drivers, and those who work in food services as well as transportation services — basically all the people who became essential workers during the pandemic because they have always been essential to us,” she said.
The bill passed by the House in May should come as no surprise because it was outlined in Project 2025, the Christian nationalist playbook being followed by the Trump administration, Dent said.
Maggie Siddiqi
The taxpayer-funded school voucher program contained in the bill is as unprecedented as it is discriminatory, said BJC Policy Advisor Maggie Siddiqi. The plan would pump $5 billion annually into vouchers and create tax shelters granting wealthy donors 100% returns on contributions to the system.
“So that’s who benefits,” Siddiqi said about rich investors. “And who’s paying for this? Almost every child in America because 90% of America’s students attend public schools.”
Public schools also will suffer because losing children to private schools results in less state dollars to cover infrastructure, utilities, personnel and programming costs that do not go down as students leave, she said. “So, schools are forced to make all kinds of different cuts. Some schools, particularly in rural areas, will be forced to close altogether. Oftentimes, private schools aren’t even an option in rural areas. Yet those students are still having to subsidize private schools and getting that money diverted away from their own school systems.”
And nothing in the bill prohibits private schools from denying admission or expelling students based on disability, religion, sexual orientation or the ability to pay tuition, Siddiqi added. “Private schools funded by taxpayer dollars through this program would not be bound by many key provisions in civil rights laws. And let’s be clear, taxpayer dollars should never go to support discrimination and should never be allowed to go to things that are only available to a select few.”
Laura Peralta-Schulte
Drastic cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are another grave injustice contained in the legislation, said Laura Peralta-Schulte, senior director of public policy and government relations at NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.
“Two out of every five babies born in the United States are born with Medicaid funding. Two in five kids get their health care through Medicaid, as do one in six non-elderly adults — think about your student that just graduated college who is in a low-paying job that doesn’t have health insurance. Think about your Uber driver,” she said.
Medicaid also covers nursing home costs for millions of Americans and provides medical coverage for 60% of those residents.
“There are a trillion dollars coming out of our primary health care programs.”
“In terms of the cut to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in this bill, what we have is $715 billion in cuts to Medicaid. That is the largest cut to this program we have ever seen in the history of the program,” Peralta-Schulte explained. “At the same time, you have almost $100 billion taken away from the Affordable Care Act. That means there are a trillion dollars coming out of our primary health care programs.”
The proposed cuts to SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, couldn’t come at a worse time, said Sakeenah Shabazz, deputy director of the Policy and Research Institute at Bread for the World.
Sakeenah Shabazz
According to the most recent data, 47 million Americans were food insecure in 2023, with about 10% of that number being children. More than 42 million people participated in SNAP that year, representing about 21.4 million households.
“When we talk about this ‘big beautiful bill,’ this is the largest cut we’ve ever seen to SNAP in the history of this program’s existence,” Shabazz said. “It comes out to about $290 billion in cuts over 10 years. This reflects about a 30% reduction in spending for SNAP compared to spending in the past.”
Shabazz urged viewers to organize letter-writing efforts in their churches to press senators to vote against cuts to SNAP.
“This is a threat to human health, to human flourishing and to taking care of God’s creation. As a faith-based organization, we are deeply concerned with all people and their ability to take care of themselves, to take care of their loved ones, and it is a moral imperative for us to speak up on this,” she said.
BJC launched a tool for opposing the federal school voucher program, and NETWORK Lobby provided a toolkit to oppose proposed health care cuts.
“Make as much noise as possible,” Siddiqi said. “Team up with local groups to do that. Whether it’s through your house of worship, through your PTA, there are so many others that want to get involved.”
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