Article authored by Michael Chameides. It is reposted here with permission from the Colorado Times Recorder. Originally published May 23, 2025. This article discusses the 2025 Budget Reconciliation bill that recently passed the House by one vote. Western Colorado’s CD-3 House Rep. Jeff Hurd voted in favor of the reconciliation bill. You can see how all House Representatives voted on the bill here. All House Democrats and two Republicans voted against the bill.
Right now, Congress is working on a giant, fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
As the Communications and Policy Director for the Rural Democracy Initiative, I’ve been hearing from rural leaders across the country about the devastating impacts this bill would have.
The good news is it’s not too late. But there’s little time to spare.
This dangerous, unpopular bill would increase costs for rural working families by thousands of dollars per year, leaving millions hungry and without health care — all to provide tax breaks and handouts to the wealthy and special interests.
Here are just six of the worst provisions.
The bill would drastically cut Medicaid and impose new barriers to care. It would take healthcare away from 13.8 million Americans and increase the cost for millions more. In some states, 50 percent of rural children get healthcare from Medicaid. Millions more rely on access to clinics and hospitals that would likely close because of these cuts.
2. It takes food off the tables of rural people.
The plan includes approximately $290-$319 billion in cuts to SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) even as the cost of groceries continues to escalate. More than 15 percent of families in small towns and rural areas rely on this support to feed their families.
3. It shifts costs to states and local governments.
State and local governments in rural areas depend more on federal funding from programs like SNAP and Medicaid than other states. Slashing federal funding to states would create new burdens for rural states that are already struggling to provide critical public services like health care, transportation, and emergency response services to local communities.
4. It takes away local control.
Landowners have fought to stop the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines by passing bans and moratoria, as well as enacting county setbacks and safety requirements to protect their communities.
But this bill would overrule state and local laws and ordinances, override local voices, and deprive residents of a fair opportunity to evaluate the adverse impacts of pipelines. It also sets up a “pay to play” system under which companies can simply pay for pipeline, mining, and drilling permits — and avoid public comment and legal challenges.
5. It ends clean energy and infrastructure funding.
The bill would phase out existing tax credits for wind, solar, batteries, geothermal, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing. It would also take away $262 million in funding for energy efficiency and conservation grants as well as transportation infrastructure.
Ending these tax credits will increase household energy costs, which are already higher in many rural communities. These changes would also reduce new clean energy projects — and jeopardize billions in rural investments in clean energy manufacturing.
6. It gives handouts to agribusiness and mega farms.
Leaders in Congress are using the budget reconciliation process to give big farms a $50 billion windfall. Add the heightened pressures and instability caused by the Trump administration’s erratic trade policy and more family farmers would lose their farms — while Big Ag consolidates more of the market.
In short, this bill would make it harder for rural people to meet their basic needs — all so the wealthy and corporations can avoid paying their fair share of taxes like the rest of us do.
Lawmakers have already heard from the giant corporations who helped write the bill. Now, they need to hear from the rest of us. It’s up to us to alert our communities and tell our lawmakers: Don’t sell rural America out to big corporations and the wealthy.
Michael Chameides is the Communications and Policy Director for the Rural Democracy Initiative. A longer version of this op-ed was originally published by Barn Raiser. This version was distributed for syndication by OtherWords.org.
Most states that turned down expanded Medicaid (benefits for those low-income residents aged 19 to 65) are more rural than urban. It is not clear to me that CHIP was eliminated from the mega bill. Colorado has expanded Medicaid, so I guess the concern is National? At a higher level, I thought the bill was mostly about making the 2017 tax cuts permanent and reducing 10-year budgets by installing work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Also, the State and Local tax exemptions.
I have not found an economic model that predicts a deficit reduction outcome in any policy or act.
Most people try to find a villain to blame like Trump, the ultra wealthy Musks, Koch’s, Investment banker prof
iteers, and Project 2025 architects whose goals are implemented through a lock-step Republican congress.
I find a darker story in the benefactors.
Most of the tax breaks go to the middle-class earners of over $200,000 per year. That includes many more of the private owners of Bray Real Estate, Alpine Bank, Dalby Wendland. It is the stealthy wealthy millionaires next door who is accelerating inequality.
There is no way you can blame anyone for this. It’s at least a hundred years in the making…but let’s point the finger at Boebert, Hurd and Trump.
What exactly are the “new” tax breaks aimed at 200,000+ earners?
And who are the stealthy, next door
millionaires next door…californians?
Yeah, hmmm. I did not blame anyone.
These are not new breaks, but an act to make the 2017 breaks permanent. I was unclear, but I wanted to say that more tax revenue is created from income brackets between $200,000 and $100 million than $100 million and above.
Justified or not, income and wealth inequality do exist. It is not a goal. This level of inequality existed in the 1920s prior to the depression. It also increased in the late 70’s and also leading up to the tech bubble and the great recession real estate bubble.
My point is that we cannot grow our way out of our debt because of stagnation. And we cannot inflate our way out of debt because of the cost of interest payments. thus, we must reduce the debt through higher taxes. The Federal Reserve exists to balance inflation, unemployment, and the stability of our currency and monetart toolset. You can research this all in INvestopedia, Wikipedia, or Chatgpt/Gemini/Deepseek.
I wasn’t saying you were blaming anyone…it was a general rhetorical comment
Yes I thought that bill made the 2017 breaks permanent. But now im hearing about tax breaks for billionaires.
And I’m glad to know that inequality is a feature not a bug. It may even be biblical.
Some people seem unconcerned with debt. I remember Krugman in 2008 recommending quantitative easing.
Lots of things are biblical. Slavery is biblical. Should we bring that back too?
PS…”excellerating inequality”
1) is or should equality be the goal?
2) is our time the height of inequality in the US?
I always hear about these giant tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations but whoever says that never cites the part of the bill and how these tax cuts for the wealthy occur. It’s like these authors think too much detail will confuse us and we should just take them at their word because it sounds really bad…and because “big corporations”.
And, of course costs are getting shifted to states…that’s where medicaid lives. It’s been an additional burden to states ever since the affordable care act made it impossible for normal people without employer paid insurance to pay for insurance on their own because of the cost, (catastrophic wasn’t good enough) so
people signed up for state provided”assistance” by the millions. What could go wrong? This stuff should be free, anyway.
And just one more thing…it would be interesting to see why the republican house members voted no. Currently there are many Republican senators who are voting no because the CBO says the deficit will increase by 4 trillion ten years from now.
Big eye roll.