“This is policy murder,” Bishop William J. Barber II said Monday outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C. as he protested President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
The North Carolina pastor and activist called the massive tax and spending bill “wicked” because of proposed cuts to Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and tax credits for low-income working families.
According to CNN, the bill would extend Trump’s first-term tax cuts for the wealthy, while gutting Medicaid spending and in turn, “shatter rural health care.”
The bill slashes federal Medicaid spending by $930 billion over a decade, which Democrats oppose.
The Senate convened Monday morning to work on amendments to the bill and meet an end-of-the-week deadline the White House set for Republicans to pass the legislation.
Axios reported the Congressional Budget Office projects the Senate version would add $3.3 trillion to the deficit, compared to $2.8 trillion for the House version.
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Barber, a North Carolina pastor and president of the nonprofit advocacy group Repairers of the Breach, was joined by fellow clergy, politicians, Medicaid and SNAP recipients.
“We are facing wickedness. There’s something wicked when you have power of a congressman, a House member, a Senator, and all you can do is think about how to get up in the morning and hurt as many people as you can,” Barber said.
“There’s something wrong, something evil when you’ve got power and you’ve got free health care simply because you got elected to office, but then you want to block the people from having health care,” he continued. “This is policy murder. That’s why we brought these caskets today, because in the first year of this bill, as it is, estimates are that 51,000 people will die.”
John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies also spoke. A senior advisor at the progressive research organization, Cavanagh detailed what he described as “cruel facts” about the bill.
“At least 16 million Americans would lose health insurance. That amounts to 14 low wealth people for every millionaire household that would receive a tax cut. Take the state of New Mexico, where over a third of the inhabitants, a total of 714,000 people are on Medicaid, and over 117,000 people are projected to lose it,” Cavanagh said.
“In New York state, over a million people are projected to lose Medicaid,” he continued. “Georgia, 84,000 people expected to lose Medicaid, 440,000 expected to lose SNAP benefits.”
He urged protesters in Washington and those watching the livestream to take action.
“Call your congress people,” Cavanagh said.
Dozens were arrested at the protest. In a statement to Urban Hollywood 411, organizers said, “Faith leaders and 13 others were arrested inside the Capitol Rotunda while praying, and 24 more were arrested outside for blocking traffic.”
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