By Lew Finfer.
On July 3, the Republicans in Congress passed President Trump’s bill that literally provides trillions in tax cuts to the wealthy and to big corporations. Trump calls it a “big, beautiful bill”; I call it a “Reverse Robin Hood bill” that robs from the poor to give to the rich.
The money comes from cutting and gutting the Medicaid health program for poor families, the disabled, and the elderly, which is called Mass Health here. Over time, an estimated 17 million people nationwide and hundreds of thousands in Massachusetts will lose their health as a result of cuts to Medicaid and to Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies.
One in three Massachusetts residents is on the Medicaid rolls.
Trump’s bill also cuts SNAP food stamps that help one in six Massachusetts residents who are poor, working poor, and in parts of the working class pay for groceries. An estimated 175,000 here will lose all or parts of those benefits. These cuts will lead to trims in the state budget because federal dollars help to fund those programs.
The “Reverse Robin Hood bill” will also fund the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. As they say, the list goes on, and on, and on.
It didn’t matter to Trump or the Congressional Republicans that polls showed large majorities were opposed to the bill. Those Republicans have slight majorities in the House and Senate, so they can ram through a bill. When Trump commanded them to get it passed by July 4, they obeyed.
In addition to signing his bill for the benefit of the wealthy and the large corporations, the president is refusing to spend funding passed by Congress even though that’s illegal. There’s also his elimination of the Agency for International Development’s (USAID), which has long administered life-saving humanitarian programs around the world, and his cancelling of hundreds of grants for researching cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s, other infectious diseases, and public health emergencies.
We know some of us feel that this is the worst time politically that we’ve ever lived through, and others think that it’s the worst time ever our country, and it may be. Those who support President Trump clearly believe the opposite.
In her poignant book, “A Republic of Suffering,” the historian Drew Faust has written about the mourning for the 600,000 dead from the Civil War. She invoked the legacy of that war, by which our union of states prevented the South from forming a new country that might have had slavery forever, writing:
“We are not being asked not to charge into a hail of Minié balls [bullets] and artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?”
We so need to step up. In practical terms, this means donations to candidates and to organizations fighting for our values. Stepping up includes attending a demonstration. It means writing letters, volunteering for phone banks, and volunteering to go door to door in the key districts for the 2026 and 2028 elections.
It also means asking others to join you in stepping up. There’s nothing radical about trying to save your country and upholding the legacy of liberty and justice for all.
Lew Finfer is a Dorchester resident.
