Reconciliation Bill Trades Life for Death, New Report Says
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Every state in the nation would be devastated by the health care and nutrition cuts imposed by the Republican reconciliation bill that just passed the House of Representatives, according to a new report by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Public Citizen.
“Trading Life for Death: What the Reconciliation Bill Puts at Stake in Your State” provides a state-based breakdown of how many people could continue receiving Medicaid, SNAP, or the Child Tax Credit in each U.S. state if the superfluous militarized spending expansion on immigration enforcement and the Pentagon were removed from the package and reallocated back into human needs.
Overall, the reconciliation bill would take health insurance from 13.7 million people, including 8.6 million people insured under Medicaid, and threaten food stamps (SNAP) for 11 million people, including four million children.
By way of example of the tradeoffs highlighted by the report: For the $25 billion proposed to be wasted on Trump’s fantasy ‘Golden Dome’ missile system, 7,529 people on Medicaid in Arizona’s 5th district could keep their healthcare for a year. For the $14 billion proposed for procuring killer robots for the U.S. military, 9,794 people in North Carolina’s 1st district could continue to receive food assistance for a year. Additional state and district-level trade-offs are made available in the full report here.
“This reconciliation package is a direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director at the National Priorities Project (NPP) and one of the authors of the report. “Protecting families from losing health care and going hungry is as simple as rejecting new spending on dangerous and unnecessary weapons and indiscriminate mass deportations.”
“It’s a choice between providing food and healthcare and funding an AI-powered war and surveillance state,” said Savannah Wooten, People Over Pentagon Advocate at Public Citizen and report co-author. “If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors. Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate non-starter for every member of Congress.”