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center on budget and policy priorities
Over 700,000 Poor Kids Across 12 States Have Lost Food Aid Under Trump-GOP Budget Law
A new analysis warns that large-scale loss of food assistance is "jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society."
May 27, 2026
The budget package that US President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans rammed through last summer has already spurred large-scale loss of nutrition assistance among low-income children, with an analysis released Wednesday estimating that more than 700,000 kids across a dozen states have lost federal food aid since the GOP law took effect.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a liberal think tank, found that the "sharp participation declines" among children likely stem from provisions of the Republican law that—for the first time in the program's history—shift large Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit costs onto states. The law also expands punitive SNAP work requirements.
The new analysis notes that children account for "nearly half of the 1.6-million-person decline" in SNAP enrollment since last July among people of all ages in the 12 states with data available.
"The new law’s cost shift has led states to take steps that are making it harder for eligible people to receive SNAP, including families with children," CBPP explained. "Losing SNAP also makes it harder for low-income children to qualify for other food assistance, such as WIC and free school meals—jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society."
Republican lawmakers repeatedly denied that their legislation would strip food aid from needy children, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) saying the package was laser-focused on "fraud, waste, and abuse."
"We are not cutting SNAP," Johnson falsely claimed in May 2025, just over a month before Trump signed the Republican legislation into law. The package will cut $186 billion from SNAP over the next decade and strip food aid from millions of low-income people, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at CBPP, emphasized that the SNAP cuts triggered by the Republican law have not "fully taken effect," meaning recent benefit losses among families across the country are just the start unless Congress moves quickly to avert disaster.
"Congress must act before even more eligible low-income families—including families with children—lose the food assistance they need to afford groceries, starting by delaying this SNAP cost shift for all states," Bergh wrote on social media.
The Trump-GOP cuts to SNAP, combined with rising grocery costs stemming in large part from the president's tariffs and war of choice against Iran, have resulted in surging food bank demand across the country.
"We’ve been going to food banks every week,” a single mom in Arizona whose SNAP benefits were recently cut off told NBC News. “We’re eating less, we’re eating more frozen stuff.”
Far from reversing course on their assault on federal nutrition assistance, Republicans and the Trump administration are doubling down, pursuing massive cuts to fruit and vegetable benefits for low-income mothers. CBPP has projected that roughly 5.4 million people would lose fruit and vegetable aid if Republicans' newly proposed cuts become law.
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Appealing SNAP Ruling, Trump Is Determined to Make Sure Poor Americans Don’t Get Food Assistance
"The administration’s legal maneuver sends a clear and devastating message: that the well-being of America’s most vulnerable is not important," said the president of the Food Research & Action Center.
Nov 07, 2025
The Trump administration will not give poor Americans food assistance without a fight.
Instead of following a federal judge’s ruling Thursday that ordered officials to release Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds to 42 million Americans by the next day, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked an appeals court to immediately block the ruling on Friday.
The Trump administration has argued that due to the government shutdown, the SNAP program, which provides food assistance to those making 130% of the federal poverty line or less, functionally does not exist.
In an emergency request to the 1st Circuit Court of the United States, the DOJ called the lower court's ruling, "unprecedented" and argued that it makes "a mockery of the separation of powers.”
Furthering what has been widely interpreted as an effort to pressure Democrats to cave on their demands in the government shutdown, the appeal stated that the lapse in SNAP funding was caused by “congressional failure, and... can only be solved by congressional action.”
US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, in his second ruling against the administration's efforts to choke off SNAP benefits, wrote the previous day that the administration's plan to partially fund the program was insufficient. The previous week, McConnell had ruled that the administration had to tap a $5 billion contingency fund to fund the program and make up for the shortfall by drawing from other sources.
The administration agreed to use the contingency fund but offered a plan that fell several billion dollars short of fully funding the program and would have amounted to a 61% benefit cut for the average SNAP recipient, leaving millions without benefits altogether, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
While the administration has sought to pin the blame for funding lapses on Democrats in Congress and has asserted that its hands are tied, McConnell described the administration's maneuvering as a deliberate political stunt.
"This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided," McConnell said. “The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP... It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here."
He added that Trump had essentially telegraphed his plan to defy the court order over the weekend, writing on Truth Social that “SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens.”
This, along with messages on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) website blaming Democrats for the lapse in funding, McConnell suggested, was evidence that “SNAP benefits are being withheld for political reasons.”
“Children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” McConnell said. “This should never happen in America.”
More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the SNAP program, 39% of whom are children. As the CBPP report explained, families with children would likely be those hardest hit under Trump's partial funding proposal.
"Nearly 1.2 million SNAP households with roughly 4.9 million people—roughly 1 in 9 SNAP recipients—will receive zero benefits because their normal benefit amount is less than the planned benefit reduction," it says. "Only one-or two-person households receive a minimum benefit under SNAP rules, leaving some households with three or more members—which are primarily households with children—at risk of receiving nothing."
The USDA has also issued a warning to grocery stores telling them it is illegal for them to offer special discounts to SNAP recipients hurt by the freeze, even though the government is allowed to grant them waivers. On Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would allow grocery stores to voluntarily offer discounts to SNAP recipients whenever their benefits are affected by a government shutdown.
“Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the world,” Wyden said. “Only a monster would use that power to deny help to millions of families that don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”
As the CPBB has noted, contrary to its claims, nothing is stopping the Trump administration from transferring funds from other food assistance programs to fund SNAP fully. It has already done this twice to sustain the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which a court ruled was legal.
"Instead of using the funding that has been readily available to feed people, this administration continues to fight to deny tens of millions from accessing the nutrition they need," said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center. "For some unfathomable reason, the Trump administration wants to punish the 42 million people, including children, working parents, older adults, people with disabilities, and veterans, who rely on SNAP to put food on the table."
She added that "at a time when food insecurity is rising due to increasing grocery prices, the administration’s legal maneuver sends a clear and devastating message: that the well-being of America’s most vulnerable is not important."
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Average SNAP Recipient to See 61% Aid Cut—and Millions Will Lose All Benefits—Under Trump Plan
The Trump administration "has once again gone out of its way to inflict further harm on low-income families," said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Nov 06, 2025
The average recipient of federal food aid will see a massive 61% benefit cut this month—and millions will lose November benefits entirely—under the Trump administration's plan to only partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program as the government remains shut down.
That's according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which found that the expected 61% benefit cut exceeds what's necessary to keep November SNAP spending within the limits of the program's contingency fund.
The think tank said that roughly 1.2 million low-income US households with around 5 million people will receive no benefits at all this month because the across-the-board benefit cut is larger than their typical monthly benefit. The average SNAP recipient receives around $180 per month, or approximately $6 daily.
"Nearly 5.4 million households with one or two members will receive a minimum benefit of $12 for November," CBPP added. "This appears to violate SNAP's regulations, which require these households to receive the typical minimum benefit of $24 unless benefits are cancelled, suspended entirely, or reduced by more than 90%."
"By cutting benefits even more deeply than necessary, the administration—which previously argued (contrary to federal law and the administration's own prior practice) that SNAP's contingency funds aren't legally available to cover regular benefits—has once again gone out of its way to inflict further harm on low-income families," the think tank added.
"There is no excuse that justifies the administration delaying the release of benefits and then choosing not to utilize every resource available to provide full benefits."
The new analysis was released after President Donald Trump sparked confusion and outrage with a Truth Social post earlier this week threatening to defy court orders and withhold SNAP funding entirely until the end of the government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history.
The White House later insisted that the administration is complying with court directives, but advocates and Democratic lawmakers have denounced the partial SNAP funding plan outlined by the US Department of Agriculture as badly inadequate—particularly as families are also facing unprecedented cuts to Medicaid benefits and Affordable Care Act premium hikes stemming from congressional Republicans' refusal to extend subsidies.
"There is no excuse that justifies the administration delaying the release of benefits and then choosing not to utilize every resource available to provide full benefits to the 42 million people who rely on SNAP to put food on the table," said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center. "The decision to provide only partial benefits forces state agencies to scramble under unclear guidance, which will further delay benefits."
"It also means that families are missing out on much needed nutrition support," FitzSimons said. "Enough time has already been lost—the funds must be released immediately to avert further harm, chaos, and confusion."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote Thursday that "families can't pay half of the bill at the grocery store or make half of a meal to feed their kids."
"Americans deserve their full SNAP benefits," Jayapal added.
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Despite Court Rulings, Trump Refuses to Pay Out Food Stamp Benefits to Tens of Millions
"The administration has chosen to hold food for more than forty million vulnerable people hostage to try to force Democrats to capitulate without negotiations," says one Georgetown law professor.
Nov 01, 2025
Two federal judges have said the Trump administration cannot use the government shutdown to suspend food assistance for 42 million Americans. But hours into Saturday, when payments were due to be disbursed, President Donald Trump appears to be defying the ruling, potentially leaving millions unable to afford this month's grocery bills.
A pair of federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled Friday that the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) freeze on benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, was unlawful and that the department must use money from a contingency fund of $6 billion to pay for at least a portion of the roughly $8 billion meant to be disbursed this month.
“There is no doubt that the six billion dollars in contingency funds are appropriated funds that are without a doubt necessary to carry out the program’s operation,” said US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island in his oral ruling. “The shutdown of the government through funding doesn’t do away with SNAP. It just does away with the funding of it. There could be no greater necessity than the prohibition across the board of funds for the program’s operations.”
McConnell added: “There is no doubt, and it is beyond argument, that irreparable harm will begin to occur if it hasn’t already occurred in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food for their family."
SNAP benefits are available to people whose monthly incomes fall below 130% of the federal poverty line. More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the program, and 39% of them are children. According to USDA research, cited by the Washington Post, those who receive SNAP benefits rely on it for 63% of their groceries, with the poorest, who make below 50% of the poverty line, relying on it for as much as 80%.
McConnell shot down the administration's contention that the contingency funds may be needed for some other hypothetical emergency in the future, saying "It’s clear that when compared to the millions of people that will go without funds for food versus the agency’s desire not to use contingency funds in case there’s a hurricane need, the balances of those equities clearly goes on the side of ensuring that people are fed."
While the judge in Massachusetts, Indira Talwani, ruled that Trump merely had to use the contingency funds to fund as much of the program as possible, McConnell went further, saying that in addition, they had to tap other sources of funding to disburse benefits in full, and do so "as soon as possible." Both judges gave the administration until Monday to provide updates on how it planned to follow the ruling.
However, after the ruling on Friday, Trump insisted on social media that "government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP with certain monies we have available, and now two courts have issued conflicting opinions on what we can and cannot do."
He added: "I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT. Therefore, I have instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible."
Attorney and activist Miles Mogulescu pointed out in Common Dreams that, "until a few days ago, even the Trump administration agreed that these funds should be used to continue SNAP funding during the shutdown."
On September 30, the day before the shutdown began, the USDA posted a 55-page "Lapse of Funding" plan to its website, which plainly stated that if the government were to shut down, "the department will continue operations related to... core nutrition safety net programs.”
But this week, USDA abruptly deleted the file and posted a new memo that concocted a new legal reality out of whole cloth, stating that “due to Congressional Democrats’ refusal to pass a clean continuing resolution (CR), approximately 42 million individuals will not receive SNAP benefits come November 1st.”
As Mogulescu notes: "The new memo cited absolutely no law supporting its position. Instead, it made up a rule claiming that the 'contingency fund is not available to support FY 2026 regular benefits, because the appropriation for regular benefits no longer exist.'"
Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who previously served as an official in the White House Office of Management, said last week that it's "unequivocally false" that the administration's hands are tied.
"I know from experience that the federal government has the authority and the tools it needs during a shutdown to get these SNAP funds to families," Parrott said. "Even at this late date, the professionals at the Department of Agriculture and in states can make this happen. And, to state the obvious, benefits that are a couple of days delayed are far more help to families than going without any help at all."
She added: "The administration itself admits these reserves are available for use. It could have, and should have, taken steps weeks ago to be ready to use these funds. Instead, it may choose not to use them in an effort to gain political advantage."
In hopes of pressuring Democrats to abandon their demands that Congress extend a critical Affordable Care Act tax credit and prevent health insurance premiums from skyrocketing for more than 20 million Americans, Republicans have sought to use the shutdown to inflict maximum pain on voters.
Trump has attempted to carry out mass layoffs of government workers, which have been halted by a federal judge. Meanwhile, his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has stripped funding from energy and transportation infrastructure projects aimed at blue states and cities.
"Terminating SNAP is a choice, and an overtly unlawful one at that," says David Super, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University. "The administration has chosen to hold food for more than forty million vulnerable people hostage to try to force Democrats to capitulate without negotiations.”
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'No Question' More People Will End Up With Fake Insurance If ACA Subsidies Expire: Expert
"This is what happens when we design systems for insurance companies instead of humans."
Oct 31, 2025
Time on Thursday published reporting about "how fake health insurance is luring people in," and along with sharing stories of Americans tricked into paying for plans that aren't compliant with the Affordable Care Act, the article features an expert's warning that more could be fooled if Congress lets ACA subsidies expire.
The ongoing federal government shutdown stems from congressional Democrats' efforts to reverse recent GOP cuts to Medicaid and extend the ACA tax credits, which set to expire at the end of the year. Open enrollment for 2026 plans sold on ACA marketplaces starts Saturday, and Americans who buy insurance through these platforms now face the looming end of subsidies and substantial monthly premium hikes.
"Confusion about navigating insurance writ large and the Affordable Care Act marketplace in particular has led many people to end up with plans that they think are health insurance which in fact are not health insurance," Time reported. "They mistakenly click away from healthcare.gov, the website where people are supposed to sign up for ACA-compliant plans, and end up on a site with a misleading name."
ACA plans are required to cover 10 essential benefits, the outlet detailed, but consumers who leave the official website may instead sign up for short-term plans that don't span the full year, fixed indemnity plans that pay a small amount for certain services, or "healthcare sharing ministries, in which people pitch in for other peoples' medical costs, but which sometimes do not cover preexisting conditions."
Claire Heyison, senior policy analyst for health insurance and marketplace policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Time that "there's no question that more people will end up with these kinds of plans if the premium tax credits are not extended."
According to the outlet:
These non-insurance products "have increasingly been marketed in ways that make them look similar to health insurance," Heyison says. To stir further confusion, some even deploy common insurance terms like PPO (preferred provider organization) or co-pay in their terms and conditions. But people will pay a price for using them, Heyison says, because they can charge higher premiums than ACA-compliant plans, deny coverage based on preexisting conditions, impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage, and exclude benefits like prescription drug coverage or maternity care.
Often, the websites where people end up buying non-ACA compliant insurance have the names and logos of insurers on them. Sometimes, they are lead-generation sites... that ask for a person's name and phone number and then share that information with brokers who get a commission for signing up people for plans, whether they are health insurance or not.
To avoid paying for misleading plans, Heyison advised spending a few days researching before buying anything, steering clear of companies that offer a gift for signing up, and asking for documents detailing coverage to review before payment.
On the heels of Time's reporting and the eve of open enrollment, Data for Progress and Groundwork Collaborative published polling that makes clear Americans across the political spectrum are worried about skyrocketing health insurance premiums.
The pollsters found that 75% of voters are "somewhat" or "very" concerned about the spikes, including 83% of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 66% of Republicans. While the overall figure was the same as last week, the share who said they were very concerned rose from 45% to 47%.
As the second-longest shutdown ever drags on, 57% of respondents said they don't believe that President Donald Trump and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress are focused on lowering healthcare costs for people like them and their families. More broadly, 52% also did not agree that Trump and GOP lawmakers "are fighting on behalf of" people like them.
A plurality of voters (42%) said that Trump and congressional Republicans deserve most of the blame for rising premiums, while 27% blamed both parties equally, and just a quarter put most of the responsibility on elected Democrats.
"While President Trump focuses on the moodboard for his gilded ballroom and House Republicans refuse to show up for work in Washington, a ticking time bomb is strapped to working families’ pocketbooks," said Elizabeth Pancotti, Groundwork Collaborative's managing director of policy and advocacy, in a Friday statement.
Pointing to the Trump administration's legally dubious decision not to keep funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown, she added that "healthcare premiums are set to double and food assistance benefits are on the brink of collapse in a matter of hours, and voters know exactly who's to blame."
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'Don't Let Kids Go Hungry': Trump Panned Over Not Using Emergency Fund for SNAP
The Trump administration "just illegally reversed course," said Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee. "They're choosing to cut food assistance for 42 million Americans."
Oct 25, 2025
Elected Democrats and other critics on Saturday continued to call out the Trump administration for refusing to use contingency funding to pay for food stamps during the US government shutdown, imperiling hunger relief for about 42 million low-income people.
In November, Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits won't get their food aid if Congress doesn't reach an agreement to fund the government, which shut down at the beginning of the month due to a battle over healthcare.
"Congress established an emergency fund to ensure that millions of Americans on SNAP continue to receive nutrition assistance when funding expires in November," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, said on social media Saturday.
Sanders—the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions—then appealed directly to Republican President Donald Trump: "Don't let kids go hungry. Use these emergency funds to feed low-income families."
Throughout the week, left-leaning groups, congressional Democrats, and Democratic governors of states including Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, have called for using the contingency fund.
Sharon Parrott, a former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official who is now president of the think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, took aim at US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a Wednesday statement.
"Secretary Rollins' claim that the Trump Administration is unable to deliver November SNAP benefits during a shutdown is unequivocally false," Parrott said. "In fact, the administration is legally required to use contingency reserves—billions of dollars that Congress provided for use when SNAP funding is inadequate that remain available during the shutdown—to fund November benefits for the 1 in 8 Americans who need SNAP to afford their grocery bill."
"Speaking as a former OMB official, I know from experience that the federal government has the authority and the tools it needs during a shutdown to get these SNAP funds to families," she continued. "It would be unconscionable for the administration to go out of its way to threaten millions of children, seniors, veterans, people with disabilities, parents, and workers with hunger, rather than taking all legal steps available to provide food assistance to people who need it."
That same day, a trio of experts at the Center for American Progress also argued that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) "is legally obligated to use" the contingency resources. They further highlighted that "the Trump administration has spent the entire year endangering the food security of millions of Americans. From terminating funding used to purchase food for schools and food banks to passing the largest cuts in SNAP history, the administration has made it clear that its goal is to take food away from hungry families—and that sentiment is extending to the USDA's approach to the shutdown."
US House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and Subcommittee on Nutrition and Foreign Agriculture Ranking Member Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), along with nearly every other Democrat in the chamber, sent a letter to Rollins on Friday. They wrote:
USDA's shutdown plan acknowledges that "congressional intent is evident that SNAP's operations should continue since the program has been provided with multiyear contingency funds." USDA still has significant funding available in SNAP's contingency reserve—which Congress provides precisely for this reason—that can be used to fund the bulk of November benefits.
We urge USDA to use these funds for November SNAP benefits and issue clear guidance to states on how to navigate benefit issuance. Additionally, while the contingency reserve will not cover November benefits in full, we urge USDA to use its statutory transfer authority or an other legal authority at its disposal to supplement these dollars and fully fund November benefits.
As Politico reported Friday, "The contingency fund for SNAP currently holds roughly $5 billion, which would not cover the full $9 billion the administration would need to fund November benefits."
"Even if the administration did partially tap those funds, it would take weeks to dole out the money on a pro rata basis—meaning most low-income Americans would miss their November food benefits anyway," the outlet explained. "In order to make the deadline, the Trump administration would have needed to start preparing for partial payments weeks ago, which it has not done."
Politico and other outlets obtained a brief memo from the USDA blaming Democrats for the disruption and claiming that "contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits."
"SNAP contingency funds are only available to supplement regular monthly benefits when amounts have been appropriated for, but are insufficient to cover, benefits," the memo states. "The contingency fund is not available to support [fiscal year] 2026 regular benefits, because the appropriation for regular benefits no longer exists."
"Instead, the contingency fund is a source of funds for contingencies, such as the Disaster SNAP program, which provides food purchasing benefits for individuals in disaster areas, including natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, that can come on quickly and without notice," it continues. "For example, Hurricane Melissa is currently swirling in the Caribbean and could reach Florida."
The memo adds that "this administration will not allow Democrats to jeopardize funding for school meals and infant formula in order to prolong their shutdown."
After also obtaining the memo, CNN asked Trump if he would direct the USDA to fund SNAP next month. The president—who left for Asia later Friday—claimed, "Yeah, everybody is going to be in good shape, yep," without offering any details.
Responding to the memo on social media Saturday, Democratic members of the House Agriculture Committee said that the Trump administration "just illegally reversed course by deciding not to provide food assistance to Americans next month. They have the funding and the legal authority to provide full benefits. They chose not to use it. They're choosing to cut food assistance for 42 million Americans."
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'Blatant Extortion': Healthcare for Millions Hangs in the Balance as GOP Plows Toward Shutdown
“Congressional Republicans would rather risk a government shutdown than reverse course and preserve healthcare tax credits millions rely on," said one critic.
Sep 26, 2025
As the White House threatens mass layoffs of federal workers in the event of a looming GOP government shutdown, healthcare and consumer advocates warned Friday that millions of Americans would either lose insurance coverage or see their premiums spike—and some critics say that's exactly what Republicans want.
On Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget directed federal agencies to prepare to fire large numbers of employees if the government shuts down on October 1, a move that critics say OMB Director Russ Vought is using as leverage to force the hand of Senate Democrats who last week blocked advancement of a stopgap spending measure passed in the House.
Democrats are seeking to negotiate bipartisan legislation that includes an extension of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Legislation introduced earlier this month by House and Senate Democratic leaders offered a short-term fix for keeping the government running while permanently extending ACA subsidies, reversing Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump on July 4, lifting the freeze on foreign aid, and restoring funding for public broadcasting.
"The president and Republican congressional leaders are doing nothing to address a looming, massive healthcare cost spike for more than 20 million people," Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said in a statement Friday. According to CBPP, that' roughly the number of Americans who will be affected if the ACA's premium tax credits are allowed to expire at the end of this year, which they will absent congressional action.
"This is how dictators and comic book archvillains behave."
Taking aim at the measure proposed by GOP lawmakers that would keep the government running through November 21, Parrot—who decried the mass firing threat as "blatant extortion"—said that "Republicans are claiming their short-term continuing resolution is business as usual, but nothing about this moment is normal."
Lawmakers introduced two dueling continuing resolutions earlier this month; both measures failed to pass. Congress must pass any continuing resolution by October 1, the start of the new fiscal year, to prevent a shutdown.
“The Trump administration is threatening to inflict massive harm on all of us unless Democrats in Congress surrender in the funding fight," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "A temporary lapse in funding does not provide grounds for an agency to fire federal workers indiscriminately—and really, this is just a threat to harm the public if Republicans don’t get their way."
“This whole saga demonstrates exactly who is to blame for a shutdown: Trump and Republicans in Congress," Gilbert added. "Instead of negotiating a funding deal in good faith like every White House and Congress in history has managed to do, Trump and Republicans are threatening the American people with ruin if they don’t get their way."
"This is how dictators and comic book archvillains behave," she said. "Congress must not back down in the face of this reprehensible and un-American threat against all of us.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) faced intense criticism in March for leading a small group of Democrats who helped end the last such standoff. At the time, he warned that a shutdown would be a "gift" allowing Republicans "to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now.”
The evisceration of federal agencies—as pursued by the Trump administration and its so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—is a main objective of the far-right blueprint for a government overhaul known as Project 2025, whose executive policy section was authored by Vought.
Parrott noted that this time around, Republicans "have so far refused bipartisan negotiations to prevent families across the country already struggling to afford healthcare and other basics from taking this hit. Indeed, they have rejected bipartisan discussions on anything related to year-end spending bills, even as they need bipartisan support in the Senate to pass short- or long-term funding bills."
"Congressional Republicans and the president need to come to the table with Democrats to reach a deal that prevents healthcare cost spikes for millions of people and ensures the administration can’t unilaterally or illegally undo parts of bipartisan funding laws simply because the president dislikes them," Parrott added.
New polling published Wednesday by Impact Research shows that 72% of respondents want Congress to extend the healthcare tax credits, with 44% calling the issue "very important." More than half of those polled said that lowering the cost of monthly health insurance premiums would provide the biggest relief to their monthly expenses.
“This latest polling clearly shows that Americans are demanding lower costs and affordable healthcare, yet Republicans in Congress continue to ignore them in favor of millionaires and billionaires,” Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal said in a statement.
“Congressional Republicans would rather risk a government shutdown than reverse course and preserve healthcare tax credits millions rely on," Tal added. "We need our leaders to focus on lowering healthcare costs, not enriching the ultrawealthy.”
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CBO Confirms With Trump-GOP 'Big, Ugly Law,' Working Families Lose 'And Billionaires Win'
"This isn't shared sacrifice—it's class warfare," said one policy expert.
Aug 11, 2025
Congressional Democrats and policy experts blasted U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers' recently signed megabill on Monday in response to a new nonpartisan analysis about its varied impacts on American households.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) requested the report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The analysis "confirms that the deeply unpopular One Big Ugly Law is also deeply unfair. It rips food and healthcare from children, veterans, and seniors, hurting the most vulnerable among us in order to enact massive tax breaks for billionaire donors," Jeffries said in a statement. "The American people deserve better than this cruel Republican budget scam."
"Hardworking families pay the biggest price while billionaires reap the reward."
The CBO said last month that the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $3.4 trillion to the national deficit and cause at least 10 million people to lose health insurance over the next decade—though the latter figure ticks up when accounting for other GOP attacks on healthcare.
The agency said Monday that under the GOP law, the richest 10% of households are set to see $13,600 more annually, mainly attributable to tax cuts. Meanwhile, the poorest 10% will lose about $1,200 per year, mostly due to "reductions in in-kind transfers," such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). CBO estimates that roughly 4 million Americans, including 1 million children, will see significant cuts to food aid due to the law's new restrictions.
"Trump and congressional Republicans continue to falsely claim that their Big, Ugly Betrayal of a bill is a windfall for working families. In reality, hardworking families pay the biggest price while billionaires reap the reward," declared Merkley. "It is truly unfathomable that Trump and Republicans in Congress are championing a bill that gives the top 10% $13,600 more per year—while the least affluent 10% will lose $1,200 per year. This is families lose, and billionaires win."
Also noting the projected losses and gains for the bottom and top 10% of households, Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the progressive think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), said that "this isn't shared sacrifice—it's class warfare."
As Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on CBPP's food assistance team, detailed on social media Monday:
Slashing federal funding for SNAP and imposing those costs on most states will eliminate or reduce SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people in a typical month, CBO estimates. And 96,000 kids will also lose free school meals when they're cut off SNAP.
But the impacts could be far greater than CBO projects if more states slash SNAP—or opt out of the program altogether—in response to the deep cut in federal funding. The risk of these drastic cuts would increase during recessions, when state budgets are more strained.
CBO also estimates that 2.4 million people will be cut off SNAP by the dramatic expansion of SNAP's existing harsh, ineffective, and red tape-laden work requirement. Research consistently shows this policy doesn't increase employment or earnings. It just takes food away from people...
But the harm of the work requirement won't be limited to the 2.4 million adults who will be cut off SNAP. When this policy cuts an adult off SNAP, it also dramatically reduces food benefits for everyone else in the household—including kids, seniors, and people with disabilities.
The megabill will also end SNAP eligibility for tens of thousands of immigrants with a lawful status based on humanitarian need, including refugees, people granted asylum, and certain survivors of labor or sex trafficking. Again, many of those losing food assistance are children.
"Bottom line: At a time when low-income families are increasingly struggling to afford groceries, the Republican megabill means millions of them will soon be losing some or all of the help that they need to put food on the table," Bergh added.
With the president waging a tariff war on the rest of the world, polling released earlier this month shows that Americans are having a hard time with the costs of necessities, including groceries, and are stressed about it. The advocacy group Unrig Our Economy recently launched an interactive tool to help Americans see exactly how much the price of essentials has gone up in their state under Trump and Republican control of Congress.
"Prices keep rising, and American families are struggling. So what are President Trump's Republicans doing to help? They passed a law that will make things worse by stealing from working families to give billionaires a tax break," Boyle said Monday. "This nonpartisan report confirms the GOP's Big, Ugly Law is a total betrayal of the middle class. I won't let the American people forget who sold them out."
While the analysis is new, Schumer stressed that GOP lawmakers knew what they were doing when they passed the legislation.
"Today, yet another nonpartisan analysis of Trump and Republicans' 'Big, Ugly Betrayal' lays out the cold hard facts: While multimillionaires get $300,000 per year in tax breaks, the least wealthy will lose $1,200 a year," he said. "The reality is Republicans knew this when they passed it. They just don't care. They sold out American families all to line the pockets of their billionaire donors and special interests."
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Looming Trump Policy May Mean Longer Wait Times for Millions of Social Security Recipients
Beginning in mid-August, Trump's Social Security Administration will no longer allow seniors to perform many routine tasks related to their benefits over the phone, as they have been able to do for decades.
Jul 30, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's Social Security Administration is rolling out a new policy next month that is expected to further increase wait times for basic services.
Beginning in mid-August, the SSA will no longer allow seniors to perform many routine tasks related to their benefits over the phone, as they have been able to do for decades.
In order to do things like change their addresses, check the status of claims, request benefit verification letters, or ask for tax forms, they will soon need to perform a complicated multifactor online verification process.
As a report published Tuesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) points out:
The new PIN code process will be impossible for many beneficiaries to complete. And if they can't, they'll need to travel to a field office. That will require 3.4 million more people to travel to SSA offices annually, by the agency's own estimates. This will create a significant new burden, particularly for those who live in rural areas or have transportation or mobility difficulties.
CBPP estimated that the restrictions on phone service will result in seniors spending an additional 3 million combined hours traveling to Social Security offices each year.
A previous policy change rolled out in April has already forbidden recipients from using the phone to change their bank account information, which the SSA revealed would require 2 million more people to make in-person visits each year.
The new restrictions to be rolled out next month, the administration's numbers say, will force another 3.4 million people to travel to the offices.
(Graphic: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
Once they reach the office, their waits are also likely to increase. Social Security offices around the country are already increasingly overburdened due to massive cuts to staff by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year.
Nearly 2,000 field office staff took buyouts offered by Elon Musk—who stated his goal to "eliminate" Social Security altogether—and an undisclosed additional number either took early retirements or left.
According to an investigation by the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), these cuts have also increased wait times for phone calls by a hour and 45 minutes on average.
The administration is also now relying on an artificial intelligence program to answer phone calls, which callers have described as "maddening" to use. A Washington Post reporter who tested the system in May found that it struggled repeatedly to answer her basic query about not receiving her check and needing to speak to an agent.
(Video: MSNBC)
Another 1,000 field office staff were reassigned to answer phones in early July after phone lines became overwhelmed following earlier workforce cuts.
While it remains to be seen what effect this will have on call response times, it is expected that this will only exacerbate the increased wait times for in-person services, which will become more heavily burdened due to the new requirements.
Last week, Kathleen Romig, a former SSA official who's now the director of Social Security and disability policy at CBPP, described it as "a deep hole of their own creation," as SSA's cuts meant "you just don't have enough people to go around to serve the public." She said increasing call staff by poaching from already understaffed field offices was like trying to "rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic."
Warren, meanwhile, has accused the SSA of fudging numbers to downplay long wait times. The administration has claimed its wait times are as low as 12 minutes. But when Warren's office tested the call lines in June, it took an average of 102 minutes for calls to be answered—over 8.5 times longer than what the agency claimed—while more than half were not answered by a human at all.
"The SSA is failing to provide policymakers and the public with accurate information about the extent of the problem, using convoluted calculations to obfuscate the real data, or withholding information entirely," Warren said Tuesday.
In a letter sent Friday to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, Warren pressed for him to provide "a thorough and expeditious evaluation of wait times for key Social Security services" in compliance with an audit requested by the agency's inspector general.
According to Warren, Bisignano committed to the audit in a meeting between the two, but it was not specified when it would take place.
In the meantime, the issue of long wait times is likely to only grow worse, as the Trump administration plans to eliminate a total of 7,000 employees from the administration by the end of the fiscal year.
Romig and CBPP senior fellow Devin O'Connor wrote Tuesday that "millions of beneficiaries will start to be affected" by the new restrictions on phone calls "within a matter of weeks."
"SSA did not consult with stakeholders before rushing to make this switch," they continued, "and it has yet to announce or explain the change to Social Security beneficiaries, instead burying notice of the change in a technical notice on a regulatory website."
"The agency," they said, "has provided no clear justification for the change other than vaguely citing 'fraud risk,' despite there being no publicly documented problems with completing any of these tasks by phone."
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'Deep Hole of Their Own Creation': Trump Social Security Administration Cuts Come Back to Bite
"It really is a manufactured crisis as a result of past changes that just continue to just make everything worse, sadly," said Jessica LaPointe, who works at a Social Security field office in Madison, Wisconsin.
Jul 22, 2025
The staffing cuts made by the Trump administration at the Social Security Administration are reportedly coming back to bite them as the agency continues to struggle with serving beneficiaries in a timely manner.
A new report from NPR finds that the administration has been shifting more SSA workers to man the agency's national 800 phone number after staffing reductions from earlier this year led to significantly increased wait times for callers. In all, the agency estimates that 4% of frontline SSA workers have been at least temporarily moved to help handle 800 number calls.
While the SSA claims that this has reduced wait times for callers, experts and current SSA employees who spoke with NPR warned that they will only create problems in other areas over the long haul.
"They are in a deep hole of their own creation on staffing and so you just don't have enough people to go around to serve the public," Kathleen Romig, a former SSA official and current director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told NPR. "And so all you can really do at this point is rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic."
Nicole Morio, a field office worker in Staten Island, told NPR that the staff cuts have led to a workforce that is burned out and overwhelmed.
"The stress level is probably at a maximum for everyone," she said. "At one point I think we were doing the work of 1.8 people. Now it seems as though we're doing the work of 10 to 15."
Jessica LaPointe, who works at a Social Security field office in Madison, Wisconsin, expressed a similar sentiment in an interview with NPR.
"If [SSA employees] decided not to take the buyout incentives that were offered in March, then now they're just leaving to save their mental health as their work keeps piling up," said LaPointe, who also serves as president of a local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union that represents 25,000 workers. "It really is a manufactured crisis as a result of past changes that just continue to just make everything worse, sadly."
LaPointe also dismissed the administration's spin on the situation and said "there's no indication that this is getting better," and that "we have an agency not listening to the workers."
Even if the administration's claims about improving call wait times are accurate, critics note that it's become much more difficult to see how such improvements are impacting the rest of the agency given that it recently removed assorted real-time metrics that had once been tracked on its website.
So far, an estimated 4,600 SSA employees have left the agency since March, and the Trump administration has pushed plans to reduce the staff by a total of 7,000 employees all together, which would represent a 12% cut in its workforce since the start of the year.
Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, argued in an op-ed for Common Dreams last week that "total collapse" of the Social Security system is the end-goal of President Donald Trump and his Republican allies.
"Republican politicians hate effective government programs, because they don't make any money for their paymasters on Wall Street," Lawson wrote. "Since Social Security is the most popular and effective government program, they hate it most of all—and are doing everything they can to destroy it."
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