The following is a statement from Matt Hildreth, Executive Director of RuralOrganizing:
For decades, Republicans said they cared about the deficit. That was a lie. They promised they would never cut Medicaid. That was a lie. They said they wouldn’t touch Medicare. That was a lie, too.
By voting for the “Big Beautiful Bill” Act, every single House Republican, except for just two, has shown they have one objective above all else: giving tax breaks to their billionaire donors, like Elon Musk.
Every single Democrat voted against this bill that would devastate thousands of small towns and rural communities across the country, and I’m proud that Democrats are united in their stand for families over billionaires. Now, we need House and Senate Democrats to do everything they can to keep this bill from becoming law through the reconciliation process.
House Republicans voted to take away health care from working families and food stamps from hungry kids. On top of Trump’s tariffs, this bill would be a brutal blow to millions of rural families, because rural Americans use these programs at a higher rate than Americans in more densely populated areas.
Almost every Republican House district includes rural communities. This reconciliation package would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history, and it will hit rural communities especially hard. Republicans know that programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Medicare are not only popular but vital to the voters who send them to Washington. That’s why, for months, several Republican politicians shared their concerns about how hard these cuts would hit and vowed they wouldn’t support any cuts. But, they did anyway.
Today, Republicans showed that they don’t work for rural Americans. They work for Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires.
The following is a statement from Annie Contractor, Policy Director of RuralOrganizing:
The vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reveals how Republican legislative leadership has corrupted the democratic process through deliberate manipulation and bad-faith tactics. Once again, they scheduled this critical vote for the middle of the night — not because of any urgent deadline, but to make it harder for legislators to participate and hide their shameful actions from the public. Despite these tactics, every single Democrat showed up and voted, demonstrating their commitment to doing the job they were elected to do.
The process was deliberately corrupted to avoid scrutiny. After a marathon 21-hour markup, they rushed to a vote just after 2:30 AM — giving no one adequate time to understand the massive changes being made. This corruption of normal legislative procedure isn’t how legislation affecting millions of Americans should be passed, especially one that includes $300 billion in cuts to food assistance and nearly $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
The reason for this manipulation is clear: this bill will line the pockets of billionaires while imposing devastating costs on working families and rural communities. The proposed cuts to food assistance and Medicaid will hit heavily rural states the hardest — the very communities represented by the Republicans who voted for this bill.
The mission of RuralOrganizing.org is to rebuild a rural America that is empowered, thriving, and equitable. Follow us on Twitter @RuralOrganizing.
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