To the Editor:

The big beautiful bill is neither. Tax cuts take effect this year. While the cuts for the highest earners are permanent, most cuts expire in 2030. Sixty percent of the total tax savings will go to people with incomes greater than $217,000 per year.

For the next five years, the rest of us will see between $3,000 (high earners) and $156 (lowest earners) in annual tax savings. For many people, any tax savings will be canceled by the loss of Medicaid support. And, if you got an email from the Social Security Administration praising Trump for tax cuts to Social Security payments, understand those cuts don’t apply to everyone and expire in 2028.

Medicaid changes take effect in 2027, after the mid-term elections. In House District 11, 196,000 people depend on Medicaid or Obamacare (kkf.org). Although regulations to implement the cuts don’t yet exist, they will include eliminating coverage for some people, providing fewer services, lowering payments to providers and increasing requirements to prove eligibility. Part of every medical bill covers overhead — salaries and benefits, operations and maintenance. The loss of Medicaid/Obamacare contributions to overhead means people with private insurance and/or Medicare will have to make up the difference, so everyone’s medical costs will rise.  

Why did Congress gut Medicaid? In addition to funding tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy, they had to increase the Department of Homeland Security budget. The ICE budget is $170 billion over the next five years. Higher than the combined budgets for DEA, FBI, ATF, Secret Service and Marshal Services! (Newsweek.com) Higher than the defense budgets of all but 15 countries! (Democracynow.org) It includes $46.5 billion for the border wall, $45 billion for internment camps, $30 billion for ICE training, $5 billion for Customs checkpoints, $6 billion to train/retain border patrol agents and border protections’ field support, and $3 billion for immigration courts (Axios.com).

This administration has provided permanent tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy and will spend billions illegally seizing and deporting so far only brown people, most of whom are law-abiding people here legally or even U.S  citizens with jobs and careers. Conversely, this administration won’t support people who need basic health care. Our government is beyond cruel. And they call themselves Christians! They are anything but. Poll after poll makes clear that far fewer than half of us agree with these allocations of tax dollars. At this point, the bill has become law. We need to quickly develop plans to take care of family and friends about to lose their health care safety net, adjust household budgets to meet rising health care costs, and ensure these clowns are not reelected in 2026.

Additional sources for this letter include articles in national newspapers; responses to Google searches for “big beautiful budget bill” plus key words such as Medicaid, ICE, polls; and columnists Robert Hubbell, retired attorney; Joyce White Vance, retired U.S. attorney; and Heather Cox Richardson, U.S. historian.  

Karen Patterson
Highlands