January 29, 2025
This letter from Pennsylvania organizations was sent to all members of the PA congressional delegation today.
As you know, the incoming Trump administration and the Republican congressional leaders plan to extend and potentially expand the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which is set to expire at the end of 2025.
We urge you to use the expiration of these provisions as an opportunity to address long-standing inequities in our tax code and to raise more revenue to meet our country’s current obligations and address critical unmet needs. We also urge you not to reduce federal funding for the Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP programs.
No matter what we look like or where we’re from, all Pennsylvanians believe in caring for their families and community. People in our state work hard, giving our all as teachers, delivery drivers, and nurses, volunteering at the local food bank or for a neighborhood cleanup. And while we believe in first relying on ourselves and our families whenever possible, we know that our success as individuals, families, and communities also depends on a vibrant public sector that educates our young people; provides vital public goods such as transportation infrastructure, protection from pollution and climate change, and basic medical and other research; and creates a safety net, protecting those of us who suffer from unemployment, disability, poverty or illness.
Regardless of who we voted for in November, the vast majority of Pennsylvanians believe in a government that accomplishes these goals and is paid for by a tax system that asks everyone to pay their fair share. They oppose—and did not vote in 2024 for—giving tax cuts to the wealthiest households and corporations.
Our recent poll powerfully shows that voters of all parties believe that taxes are unfair in the United States today. A majority of voters believe that our tax system takes too much from working people, while allowing ultra-rich Americans and wealthy corporations to pay too little.
We found that
- 76% of Pennsylvanians support raising taxes on wealthy corporations.
- 76% support increasing taxes on the wealthiest households.
- 77% support raising taxes on households earning more than $400,000 a year.
- 57% support raising the federal corporate tax rate from the 21% level set in the TCJA.
(Poll results for each congressional district can be found in the addendum to this letter. A strong majority in support of each of these ideas can be found in every congressional district.)
The TCJA was unpopular in 2017. And it remains so today, for good reason. The claims made on behalf of the TCJA have turned out to be false.
- The proponents of these tax cuts said big corporate tax cuts would trickle down to big increases in wages for workers — but the typical worker got nothing from it.
- They said the bill would pay for itself — it actually increased the deficit by $2 trillion.
- They said the tax cuts would create jobs, but the evidence doesn’t show that.
An extension of the TCJA would have even worse results. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it would increase deficits by about $7.5 trillion over 10 years. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that President Trump’s tax plans would lead “to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for the other 95 percent of Americans.”
Republican members of Congress have floated the idea of paying for an extension of the TCJA by reducing federal expenditures for Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP. Pennsylvania voters, like voters in other states, strongly support these programs, again with good reason. Medicaid provides critical support for millions of Pennsylvanians.
Medicaid provides health care to
- over 2 million adults.
- over 1.4 million children (including 200,000 served by CHIP).
- over 1.4 million people who need mental or behavioral health care.
- over 400,000 seniors, who receive care in nursing homes, assisted living facilities or, in some cases, at home.
- over 300,000 Pennsylvanians with a substance use disorder.
- over 2 million people, who rely on SNAP to pay for their groceries.
Reductions in Medicaid and CHIP spending of the kind being talked about recently in Washington, DC, threaten to cost the state of Pennsylvania between 2 and 5 billion dollars each year. That would leave our state government with the difficult choice of trying to replace some federal dollars with money from Pennsylvania taxpayers or drastically reducing eligibility for Medicaid or coverage for medical problems. While we would hope the state would provide some funding to replace that which is lost, it simply does not have the resources to make up for the kinds of Medicaid reductions being bandied about now.
Nor should it. No candidate for office, in either party, campaigned on a plan to devastate health care for millions of people in our state or any other state.
So, we urge you to oppose extending, let alone expanding, tax giveaways to billionaires and wealthy corporations and, even more, the attempt to pay for some of them by taking health care away from millions of Pennsylvanians and tens of millions of people across the country.
Signed,
Action Together NEPA