Senate Votes for Hunger and Sickness

The fight goes back to the House

After another all-night voting session, the US Senate voted 50-50 on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), known in some quarters as the MAGA Murder Budget, because early estimates are that it will result in 51,000 Americans dying every year as a direct result of the cuts to Medicaid. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote, sending the bill back to the US House of Representatives.

In the debate in both houses of Congress, Republicans have slandered low-income Americans and lied about immigrants benefiting from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, taking away resources that should have gone to “deserving” American citizens. They also demanded that people work if they want assistance with food or health care, lifting up the glorious “dignity of work”.

Let’s make a few things clear. One, undocumented immigrants do not get SNAP or Medicaid (some states use their own funds to cover some undocumented immigrants in. Medicaid, practice the GOP is trying to squash in the reconciliation bill, but NO states provide SNAP to undocumented immigrants and the federal government does not fund SNAP or Medicaid for any undocumented immigrants). They are ineligible and, believe me, the eligibility process is VERY thorough. Two, SNAP is an entitlement. If person A gets SNAP, that has no bearing on whether person B gets SNAP. So no, “undeserving” noncitizens are not keeping American citizens from getting SNAP. Three, SNAP participants who can work, do work: generally those who are not working are children, disabled, or elderly.

How did we get here? For at least the last 50 years, the Republican Party has slandered low-income Americans and the working poor, epitomized by President Reagan’s racist trope of the “welfare queen”. His welfare queen archetype was based on a real person: Linda Taylor, a con artist. “She was black, decked out in furs, and driving her Cadillac to the welfare office to pick up her check.” Linda Taylor was in no way typical of welfare recipients, but Reagan made sure hers was the image people pictured when they thought of people on welfare.

The stereotype was effective because our society always has viewed poor people with suspicion. That is why food assistance and cash welfare programs have so much red tape, checking people’s income, citizenship, and verifying the asset value of their car or even their burial plot. Public benefit programs are designed from the assumption that poverty is the result of bad behavior and bad decisions. As a result, the average SNAP application is 17 pages long, and states often struggle to process SNAP applications within the federally required 30 days. THIRTY DAYS!

But why are we suspicious of people in poverty? Poverty is simply a circumstance where income is lower than the cost of basic needs. That’s it. Whose fault is it that wages don’t cover the cost of basic needs? The employers’ fault! But instead of requiring employers to pay a living wage (i.e., above poverty), we blame the workers, for getting paid low wages. This doesn’t make any sense!

It makes even less sense when you consider that the federal minimum wage hasn’t been updated since 2009, when it was set at $7.25 per hour. Do you know how many hours you have to work at that wage to afford a modest 2-bedroom apartment in Virginia? Over 100 hours! Every week! A week only has 168 hours in it. To afford a 2-bedroom apartment on a 40-hour work week, the wage would need to be $30.25 per hour, more than four times the federal minimum.

Anti-poverty policy design has been wrong-headed for the last 50 years, because policymakers have refused to look at the root causes of the problem: low wages, systemic inequality, racial and gender inequity, and rising costs that a larger and larger share of Americans can no longer afford. A recent study showed that 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That is MOST OF US.

The rent is too high, homeownership is out of reach for many, food prices keep going up, child care is scarce and may cost more than your rent or mortgage, and wages have been stagnant for decades, even as worker productivity has soared. Who is benefiting from that increased worker productivity? The millionaires and billionaires, who are poised to get another massive tax break paid for by taking food from hungry families and healthcare from tens of millions of Americans. You know, the millionaires and billionaires who are paying their workers low wages, while they rent out Venice for their $50 million wedding.

Do you see where the problem is? Who is the real culprit of American poverty? Hint: It’s not the people who are poor. The reconciliation bill that the Senate just passed would only make poverty, food insecurity, and untreated illness worse. Much worse.