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Pennsylvania Organizations Opposed to Medicaid and SNAP Cuts, and Tax Cuts for the Ultra-Rich

By Blog Post

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

AFSCME Council 13
Community Legal Services
Cumberland County Food System Alliance (CCFSA)
Cumberland Valley Rising
Food Dignity
Hershey Indivisible Team
Just Harvest
Keystone Progress Education Fund
Make the Road Pennsylvania
National Council of Jewish Women–Greater Philadelphia
NEPA Green Coalition
PA 10th District Network
PA Council of Children, Youth & Family Services
Pennsylvania Policy Center
Philly Neighborhood Networks
Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates
Protect Our Care PA
Reclaim Philadelphia
SEIU PA State Council
SeniorLAW Center
The Partnership for Better Health PA
UUJusticePA

Trump’s Executive Order Freezing Federal Payments Is Harmful, Illegal and Unconstitutional

By Blog Post, Press Statements

Late on Monday, the Trump administration issued an executive order halting payment of grants and loans to state and local governments, social service providers, and others. This action is illegal and unconstitutional. And it is likely to cause immediate and widespread harm to people and families across our state and the country. It must be rescinded by the President as soon as possible.

There are still many uncertainties about the impact of the order. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget has issued a number of clarifications of it—however, they have done little to clarify the scope and intention of the order.

It appears now that funding for state and local programs that provide veterans’ services, ensure public safety, and help seniors will be halted. So will some funding for our school districts and federal support for child care as will funding for programs that protect our air and water from pollution, support our farmers, and provide help for those who are food-insecure. Funding for rental assistance and housing rehabilitation will be blocked as well.

In addition, organizations that provide direct services will lose funding. This means that some programs may not be able to meet their payroll in a week or two and others will have to borrow money at high interest rates just to stay open.

And whether it’s a student with disabilities unable to get support from their school district, a veteran who loses their transitional housing, a senior who can’t get a ride to doctor’s appointments, a family that loses renter assistance, or a city that can’t afford to pay its police officers, millions of people’s lives will be made much harder and may even be put at risk completely by this action.

The Pennsylvania state budget receives a total of $46 billion from the federal government to support a wide range of programs. While we believe that some of the largest of those programs—including Medicaid / Medical Assistance, Title I funding for schools, and Pell Grants—are not included in the funding freeze, we estimate that at least $14 billion of federal grants to the state is at stake. At the moment, we cannot precisely estimate the amount of federal funding of social service agencies that is at risk. But it is a great deal of money.

In addition to the damage that will be done to individuals and families, state and local government employees, and social service agencies, the sudden and unclear order will create chaos throughout our state.

And on top of all that, the order is both illegal and unconstitutional. It is an example of what was called in the 1970s “impoundment,” the practice by which the president and his administration withholds funds that have been authorized and appropriated by the Congress. The Impoundment Act of 1974 makes it illegal for the president to take such action without seeking approval of Congress and providing a reasonable rationale for the action. And in 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that impoundment was unconstitutional in Train v. City of New York.

The Trump administration’s action is not just deeply damaging to the people of Pennsylvania and the entire country but is deeply damaging to our constitutional and legal order. President Trump must immediately reverse the order to ensure everyone can continue to access the essential public services they count on to meet their basic needs.

Update: February 13

Soon after we wrote this post, federal courts blocked the Tump-Musk freeze on spending. But they have followed the freeze with more unconstitutional and illegal shenanigans.

  • They are now in the process of shutting down not one or two but three federal agencies,  USAID, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Education. To be clear, those agencies were created by Congress. No president has the right to to shut them down without an act of Congress.
  • It appears they have not fully complied with two court orders to lift the spending freeze. Just yesterday they demand New York City return funds that were appropriately and legally send to the city to reimburse for providing housing for immigrants (and pace Musk, not in luxury hotels).
  • Attorney General Bondi is suing sanctuary cities to force them to use their police resources to round up undocumented immigrants. This is an unconstitutional request. States are semi-sovereign entities that are independent of the federal government. The federal government may not commandeer the police forces of our cities or states.
  • Trump and Musk have fired the Inspector Generals of federal departments even though the law the created those position explicitly say the president may not fire them.
  • Trump is corrupting the administration of justice by having his attorney general order that federal charges against Mayor Eric Adams be dropped. In return, Davis has ordered members of his administration to not criticize the president. Rules prohibiting the president from making decisions about who should be prosecuted and who not were instituted after the Nixon administration precisely to prevent a president from using this power to corrupt the administration of justice and  to do so in a way that illegitimately expands his power.

All of these actions are the act of a dictator not a president. And they should make us worry about the fate of our representative democracy.

Perhaps the  courts will block  Trump from taking these illegal and unconstitutional actions. And perhaps he will obey the courts.  But there are two other possibilities.

One is that the Supreme Court, composed of a majority of justices Trump has picked, will legitimate actions that to any unbiased legal mind are clearly illegal and unconstitutional.

The other is that the Supreme Court will rule against Trump and then Trump will ignore their ruling.

Frankly, at this point, we are not sure which  would be a worse result. But either way, the president will be acting lawlessly. And that means our form of government as we have known it, has been overthrown. For we will have a president who will and, if not stopped in some other way, can do anything he wants. And that is not the president created by a constitution in place since 1789 and the laws that have been enacted under it.

We don’t know what happens then. We hope a massive outpouring of protest will encourage President Trump to think twice about destroying our form of government or embolden a majority of members of Congress to act.

But we would be dishonest if  we did not say that we are deeply worried when we think about what a president untethered  by any legal or constitutional constraints might do in response to massive protests.