Congress has passed Trump’s budget bill and, to no one’s surprise, it is an appalling piece of legislation that is reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the one-percenters, plus feeding his xenophobic passion to expel people whom he thinks do not belong here.

Here are the lowlights.

The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, and the bill would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.
…

The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.

…

To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back on Medicaid and food assistance for people below the poverty line.

Republicans argue they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program’s work requirements.

There’s also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services.

More than 71 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.
…

Altogether, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would increase federal deficits over the next 10 years by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034.

Bernie Sanders has a scathing response, sent in an email.

Make absolutely no mistake about it, I believe historians will look back at the afternoon of July 3, 2025 and conclude that the passage of Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was one of the greatest acts of thievery in the history of the United States, and one of the worst pieces of legislation passed in modern American history.

Plain and simple, this bill is class warfare led by Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their campaign contributors.

More for the rich. Less for working families.

Let’s look at what this legislation does.

At a time when 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, this bill slashes Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act kicking 17 million more people off their health care, including millions of kids.

It means if your mom and dad are in a nursing home, they’re going to be in trouble because 2/3 of people in nursing homes are supported by Medicaid.

And here’s an amazing irony. Many of the “red states” and districts where Republicans are providing the votes to pass this legislation have done reasonably well under the Affordable Care Act. These are states that have seen the number of uninsured people precipitously decline, and states that have relied heavily on Medicaid to counter the opioid epidemic and other health crises.

Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, disability advocates – all understand that thousands of Americans will unnecessarily die each year because this bill was passed.

But that is not all.

This legislation makes cuts to public education, nutrition assistance programs, regulations to protect us from polluters and corporate crooks and on and on it goes.

And why do they want to cut all of these programs that are so important to the working families of our country?

The answer is very simple: they want to give massive tax cuts to the richest people in America. In their program, they are going to give over $1 trillion to the top 1%, paid for by programs working people rely on to survive all while adding trillions of dollars to the debt.

And mark my words, the next time any piece of legislation comes before Congress that would help the working class of this country, these very same Republicans will once again find religion on “deficit reduction.”

What a joke.

But that is not all.

This legislation also authorizes a tremendous increase in military spending to quote-unquote “secure our border.”

Listen to Donald Trump and most all Republicans and they will tell you that border crossings have dropped to almost nothing and Trump himself said not a single migrant crossed the border last month.

So if the border is secure, what will that money be going to? What you are going to see is an expansion of the federal domestic police force the likes of which we have never seen before.

You are going to see more and more masked ICE raids ripping people off the streets in communities across the country. Not just “criminals” they claim to prioritize, but people who have been here for decades, who pay taxes, who have no criminal records — just to meet some quota set by Donald Trump and Steven Miller.

That is the bad news.

And make absolutely no mistake about it, it is terrible.

But there is some good news.

This legislation has nothing to do with what the American people want. Poll after poll shows that ordinary Americans are strongly opposed to this bill and are expressing their outrage on a daily basis.

We saw it during our Fighting Oligarchy rallies across the country.

We saw it in an unprecedented mobilization of working people volunteering and rallying to stop this bill.

And most recently we saw it in Zohran Mamdani’s winning campaign in New York City.
Zohran’s election against all odds proved that people are hungry for candidates with the courage to address the real economic and moral issues that face the majority of our people, take on the greed and power of the oligarchy and fight for an agenda that can improve life for working families.

But that work and focus cannot stop with just one primary victory in New York City.

Short-term, our immediate goal has to be to defeat Republicans and re-take control of the House and maybe the Senate in the next election by electing candidates who are willing fight back against corporate greed and create an economy that works for all of us, and not just billionaires and large corporations.

We need to elect people up and down the ballot who have the guts not only to stand up to Trumpism, but to take on the monied interests and fight for a working class that has been ignored for far too long.

Long term, we must continue our work to build a political movement which is taking on the billionaire class, the right-wing extremist Republican Party and a corporate dominated Democratic Party leadership which is wedded to maintaining the status quo.

A great nation is not judged by the number of billionaires it has, or by the tax breaks that large corporations receive. It is judged by how we treat the most vulnerable amongst us: the children, the sick, the elderly, the disabled and the poor.

If there has ever been a time in American history when our people must stand together in the fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice — now is that time.

In these very difficult times, despair is not an option. For the sake of our kids and grandchildren, the struggle must continue. Black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American, male or female, gay or straight, let us proudly stand together and create the kind of country we know we can become.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Infuriating.