Today, Congress chose to fund cruelty and foster greed at the expense of everyday needs like food for children and low-income families, health care, and energy.
The profoundly immoral “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1) is going to hurt the most vulnerable in our communities to help the wealthiest and most powerful. A historic grassroots movement opposed this reconciliation bill and blunted some of its immoral provisions.
As Bridget Moix, FCNL’s general secretary, said, “This legislation does not recognize the Light within all of us and the equal dignity of all humanity. It will make the rich richer while making the lives of poor people harder. It will provide massive funding for cruel, indiscriminate immigration enforcement while taking food away from kids and health care away from sick people. The faith community spoke out clearly against this immoral bill, making calls, writing letters, and showing up on Capitol Hill to tell our lawmakers: everyone has a right to live.”
“This legislation does not recognize the Light within all of us and the equal dignity of all humanity.”
The bill includes the largest cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history and would end SNAP benefits for nearly 3 million people.
This bill will cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance. It adds new costs and barriers for low-income individuals on Medicaid, including individuals just above the poverty line.
The tax plan gives massive tax breaks to the wealthiest in our country, leaving out working families already struggling to make ends meet.
Rolling back clean energy tax credits will drive up household energy bills by hundreds of dollars in every state in the country.
“This bill will terminate hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs and will mean more families will struggle to pay their more expensive power and grocery bills,” said Daren Caughron, FCNL’s legislative manager for sustainable energy and environment. “We are going to raise taxes on the clean energy we need to both win the global AI race and to cut pollution, all while burdening people who are struggling.”
This bill gives immigration enforcement billions more and is a blank check for heightened chaos and cruelty. There’s no accountability for out-of-control authorities.
“Wellness, order, and shared security for all matters. That’s not what’s in this act.”
This administration is preying on anchored, valued communities and places of worship, apprehending citizens, unacceptably arresting political leaders, and detaining immigrants and deporting them without mandated due process.
“Wellness, order, and shared security for all matters. That’s not what’s in this act. The U.S. will spend more on immigration enforcement than many nations spend on their entire military,” said Anika Forest, FCNL’s legislative director for domestic policy. “This will unleash an unchecked domestic force masked as immigration regulation. It heightens the terror for Dreamers, farmworkers, relatives, longstanding members of U.S. faith communities and neighborhoods. And it paves the way for even more cruelly theatrical imprisonment in detention camps like the recently opened, so-called ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in Florida.”
One good provision in this bill is that communities most affected by the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program have won renewal of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a priority for FCNL. RECA expired in 2024. This provides limited compensation and access to health screenings for people dealing with the legacy of nuclear testing and uranium mining.
Still, we are outraged and saddened by the passage of this bill because of the immense harm it will do. But our work to honor the dignity and worth of all won’t stop.
“We aren’t giving up,” Moix said. “In the struggle against this bill people from across the country found their voice. Quakers are known for our silent worship but speaking out of worship is a prophetic act. The acts of witness we saw are acts of democratic participation and acts of moral courage. Even after this bill’s passage our movement will continue.”