Congress is busy mapping out the details of its sweeping budget plan, but there’s nothing about this big bill that’s beautiful for kids. In fact, the gargantuan cuts proposed for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — combined with an inadequate Child Tax Credit — pose a quintuple threat to the nation’s children.
“In a moral nation, no such quintuple threat to children can be allowed to stand,” First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley said earlier this week. “Congress must abandon this plan to sacrifice babies for billionaires and find another way to meet the Trump Administration’s lopsided demands.”
Learn more about the impact these cuts will have on kids.
And, coming Monday, we’ll release the first analysis of the impact that combined Medicaid and SNAP cuts will have on America’s children. Join First Focus on Children and UnidosUS on Monday, May 19 at 1pmET for the virtual release of “Children Under Attack: How Congressional Assaults on Health and Food Programs are Endangering the Youngest Americans,” a new report that details the impact these cuts will have on the 45% of U.S. children served by these two programs. Rep. Kathy Castor, Co-Chair of the Congressional Children’s Caucus, will join UnidosUS senior vice president Eric Rodriguez and First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley for the virtual press conference at 1pmET. You can register at this link.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS today heard arguments related to President Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship. Although the case centers not on the meat of the issue, but on the limits of judicial power, the harm that ending birthright citizenship will inflict on the nation’s children cannot be ignored.
Eliminating birthright citizenship would:
- Require every one of the 3.6 million babies born annually in the U.S. to apply for citizenship.
- Deny newborns and infants essential services like health care, nutrition, and child care — at the very moment they need it most.
- Create a massive bureaucracy to decide which babies “belong” here and which do not.
- Leave hundreds of thousands of children stateless, making them vulnerable to exclusion and exploitation, and stripping them of the opportunity to thrive.