On the eve of Independence Day, Republicans have passed an enormously unpopular bill (2-1 against) designed to transfer wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest 20% who already own 85% of the nation’s wealth. The bill will ravage America’s social safety net, environment, and climate, nearly triple the national deficit and fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) equivalent to the 16th largest military budget worldwide if it were a country. It will make all who live in the “Land of the Free” poorer, sicker, less safe, and less free. Repairing the damage this callous betrayal of a bill will impose on American families and our federal government will take generations, and the suffering millions will go through can never be undone.
“For the people who need the safety nets that civilized cultures provide, for the debt-saddled future residents of this country, for the environment, and for human health—this bill will be devastating,” said Sarah McMillan, Wildlands and Wildlife Program director at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Combined with the dismantling and undercutting of laws and regulations that protect people and the environment, we are facing an existential challenge over the coming years and beyond. This is why we are fighting hard to protect what we can now, and remain ‘at work in the ruins’ with the utmost urgency to help draw the blueprint for building a better America.”
The bill takes an “all of the above” approach to knifing clean energy and fortifying fossil fuels by slashing renewable tax credits; cutting consumer credits for EVs and home energy upgrades; eliminating climate and air pollution grant programs; increasing already staggering subsidies for coal, oil, and gas; and bolstering fossil fuel production on public lands even though it is at a historic high globally already.
The bill will among many other things:
- Kick 17 million of the most vulnerable Americans off Medicaid, cut nursing home staff, and kill nearly 500,000 health care jobs,
- Cut food assistance program SNAP by 20%, for 40 million Americans,
- Repeal most clean energy tax credits created under Biden,
- Raise Americans’ electricity bills and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in renewable energy,
- Massively cut taxes for oil and gas companies,
- Rescind the moratorium on building new coal power plants,
- Require offshore oil and gas lease sales and new drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
- Require quarterly oil and gas lease sales on public lands,
- Rescind Inflation Reduction Act funding for clean energy programs,
- Boost USFS logging targets by 75% over the next decade (Source)
- Rescind funds for certain forest and tree-planting programs,
- Spend $46.5 billion on border wall construction while unlawful crossings are at a record low, $45 billion on immigrant detention facilities, and $31 billion on ICE,
- And add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years.
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