Tell Your Senators: Don’t Cut Antipoverty Services to Pay for Tax Cuts for Millionaires

In early April, House Republicans passed a budget proposal for next year unlike any other in modern history. The GOP plan would end Medicare as we know it and even proposes to make deep cuts to Social Security. Structural changes to programs like SNAP/food stamps and Medicaid would leave millions of low-income Americans, including poor children and seniors who rely on these programs, to fend for themselves in tough economic times. What’s more, the Republican budget actually proposes to continue excessive subsidies to special interest groups like Big Oil and further cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, the top 1 percent of Americans.

What many Americans may not know is that there is another very troubling proposal on the table that would functionally create the same outcomes as the Republican budget in terms of cuts to needed services. This parallel, back-door approach proposes to put an arbitrary limit on all federal spending. While this may sound appealing on the surface, in reality a global spending cap would hinder the ability of dynamic programs like SNAP/food stamps and Medicaid to respond in recessions when there’s increased need and would force even more cuts to programs like Head Start, Pell Grants, WIC, and home energy assistance since raising revenue is off the table.

Contact your senators today and ask them to protect the programs supporting low-income Americans in the debates over next year’s budget and reducing the national debt. Urge them to reject a spending cap and pursue a fair and comprehensive approach to deficit reduction, one in which everyone, including wealthy corporations and individuals, are asked to contribute their fair share. Your voice in this debate has never been more important.