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affordable care act
'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
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Trump's Big Bill Is Not-So-Beautiful for Small Businesses
In a recent survey of 574 small business owners, 7 of 10 opposed the spending cuts in H.R. 1.
Jun 30, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, H.R. 1, is a dream of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. However, the same bill now on the floor of the Senate is also a loaded gun of healthcare spending cuts aimed at the American people, 11.8 million of whom could lose their coverage by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Some of these Americans are mom-and-pop entrepreneurs. Dr. Alexia McClerkin owns The Wellness Doc in Houston, Texam. She can't afford to buy herself health insurance and relies on Medicaid for her three sons' coverage. Dr. McClerkin has a bird's-eye view of how her patients cope with paying their healthcare bills.
Doug Scheffel is president of ETM Manufacturing in Littleton, Massachusetts. Two of his employees rely on state health exchanges. Other employees of Scheffel are care providers for family members receiving Medicaid.
Over half, or 52%, of responding small business owners stated that climbing healthcare insurance harms their bottom lines.
In a recent survey of 574 small business owners, 7 of 10 opposed the spending cuts in H.R. 1 that seeks to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. According to this Small Business for America's Future (SBAF) survey, 27% support the healthcare cuts in H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and 5% are not sure.
This SBAF survey found that 58% of small businesses have owners, employees, or family members who rely on Medicaid, healthcare that covers the disabled, elderly, and low-income Americans, or Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP coverage), low-cost or free care for kids in families whose annual income disqualifies them from Medicaid, an alternative to unaffordable private healthcare insurance.
According to the SBAF survey, 56% of respondents themselves, their employees, or family members use Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage with premium tax credits set to expire that are not extended in the H.R. 1 legislation. Over half, or 52%, of responding small business owners stated that climbing healthcare insurance harms their bottom lines.
"Small businesses cannot afford to be shut out of access to affordable healthcare. Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, and enhanced ACA premium tax credits are lifelines for small business, their families, and their workers," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a written statement. "If Republicans gut these programs or allow them to expire, healthcare costs for small businesses and their families will skyrocket, employees will lose coverage, and entrepreneurs will be stifled. We must expand access to health coverage for all, especially small businesses."
A policy alternative for universal health coverage is Medicare for All. However, passing such legislation through Congress for the president to sign faces stiff opposition from the healthcare industry. It has been successful in blocking Medicare for All.
"Small business owners have been crying out for relief from crushing healthcare costs for years, and Congress' response is to make it worse," said SBAF co-chair Walt Rowen, owner of Susquehanna Glass Company in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in a statement. "These cuts don't solve problems—they shift costs from government programs onto the businesses least able to absorb them, all while extending tax breaks for corporations that already pay lower effective rates than the corner store."
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It’s Not Too Late for Senate Republicans to Ditch Their Historically Harmful Bill
It shocks the conscience that Senate Republican leaders saw the impacts of the House bill—16 million more people uninsured and millions losing help buying groceries, including families with children—and chose to double down.
Jun 30, 2025
The Senate is barreling toward a vote on a still-not-finished bill that would take away health coverage and food assistance from millions of people who need it, raise families’ costs, and make a large share of people in our nation worse off—all in service to tax cuts that are heavily skewed toward the wealthy and corporations. But there is still time for senators to say no to this bill.
Senate Republican leaders are tinkering with the bill to try to secure votes, but their changes won’t alter the bottom line: This bill would cause serious harm. It would increase poverty, hunger, and preventable deaths. This agenda would cause about 16 million more people to be uninsured and make healthcare unaffordable for millions more.
The bill’s proponents tout their tax package. But the tax package extends and even increases tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy heirs, while leaving out the one expiring tax cut that helps roughly 22 million people with low and middle incomes afford healthcare.
The president and Senate Republican leaders are pressing toward an immediate vote on the bill even as poll after poll shows a clear majority of people across the U.S. oppose it.
None of this harm has anything to do with fiscal responsibility: Our deficits and debts would soar under this bill. If enacted it will stand alone in history—a reconciliation bill that drives up poverty and the number of people uninsured, while increasing deficits and debt.
And, given that they are still writing the bill, Senate Republicans don’t even know what it costs, though its price tag is surely trillions of dollars, as Congressional Budget Office estimates of earlier drafts made clear.
Still, the president and Senate Republican leaders are pressing toward an immediate vote on the bill even as poll after poll shows a clear majority of people across the U.S. oppose it.
Proponents of this destructive agenda have tried every trick in the book to claim falsely that the deep and harmful cuts to food assistance and health coverage would somehow not hurt people. They’ve done all they can to portray the people it would hurt as anything but who they are—people in communities throughout the country who need help to afford the basics, most of whom work or are children, seniors, or people with disabilities.
Despite obfuscation, the truth is clear—this bill will hurt people in every state if enacted. Senators who vote for it are responsible for its impact:
- Taking health coverage away from about 16 million people and raising costs for millions more through deep cuts to Medicaid and to Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage, and its failure to extend the enhanced premium tax credits. This will cause many to lose access to life-saving medical care, accrue unaffordable medical debt, and have poorer health. The bill will lead to avoidable deaths, more uncompensated care, and more rural hospital closures.
- Taking basic food assistance through SNAP from millions of people and cutting it for millions more. The bill’s still massive, unaffordable cost-shift to states could lead some states to end their SNAP programs entirely. Over the last 50 years, SNAP’s nationwide availability has largely eliminated severe hunger and malnutrition throughout the United States. This bill walks away from the long-standing, bipartisan, and national commitment to food assistance that made that possible.
- Singling out for especially harsh treatment people who are immigrants living and working in the U.S. lawfully. The bill takes federal Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicare, ACA marketplace coverage, and SNAP food assistance away from people who are in the country lawfully, including refugees, people granted asylum, and certain survivors of domestic violence or labor or sex trafficking, among others—people who have proven that they have faced persecution or survived violence and exploitation. Because people without a documented status are already ineligible for these supports, the federal savings come from taking help away from people here lawfully.
Add in the president’s tariffs and this agenda would make all but the highest-income 20% of households worse off. The agenda directs harm on the very people the president and many Republicans say they are trying to help.
It shocks the conscience that Senate Republican leaders saw the impacts of the House bill—16 million more people uninsured and millions losing help buying groceries, including families with children—and chose to double down.
Faced with similar, catastrophic projected health coverage losses in 2017 and a deeply unpopular bill, a small group of Republican senators, along with Democrats, had the courage to defeat the disastrous ACA repeal effort. There is still time for Republican senators to find their courage and do the same again.
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