The Republican reconciliation budget—their One, Big Ugly Bill—places tax breaks for billionaires over the basic needs of our families, gutting lifesaving programs like SNAP and Medicaid for millions of North Carolinians. 

This bill isn’t just budget line items; it represents people who will be hurt by these reckless, unprecedented cuts:

Healthcare

Nationally, this bill will make more than $1 trillion in healthcare cuts. In our state, this could mean as many as 663,000 North Carolinians on Medicaid could lose their healthcare.

We know Medicaid is an essential program to keep our community healthy. It has been an important resource in combatting the Black maternal health crisis, with over 65 percent of Black mothers receiving perinatal care through Medicaid. It funds special education programming for the 17,000 students with disabilities in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. And by severely limiting provider taxes and state-directed payments which are essential lifelines for our hospitals, this budget will reduce essential services and close hospitals, especially in rural areas.

Hunger

The budget makes unprecedented cuts to food security, shifting many of the costs back to states or cutting essential services that keep our communities fed.

Cuts to SNAP are threatening the food security of 1.4 million North Carolinians, including 46,000 households in my district who receive benefits from this program. That's 1 in every 7 households. The budget forces North Carolina to cover SNAP expenses that the federal budget refused to fund, costing our state government up to $500 million to keep SNAP operational. Our state legislature now has to make the impossible choice of finding half a billion dollars in revenue to fund SNAP, reducing the number of recipients, or even exiting the program all together.

If a family loses SNAP or Medicaid because of the budget, our kids could also lose direct access to free or reduced-priced school meals. Before this budget, if students were enrolled in SNAP or Medicaid, they would automatically be enrolled in school meals. Now, there are additional hurdles for free or reduced-priced school meals eligibility. In addition, Republicans’ cuts to SNAP and Medicaid will reduce participation in the Summer EBT program, which supports over 1 million kids in North Carolina and prevents them from going hungry in the summer.

Between changes to SNAP and the EBT program, we know our most vulnerable, and especially our children, will be forced to go to bed hungry.

The bill also:

• Creates new, harsh work requirements for able-bodied adults, raises the work requirement age to 64, and forces parents or guardians of children 14 and older to work to receive SNAP benefits.
• Strips exemptions for able-bodied adults experiencing homelessness, veterans, and those up to 24 years of age that were in foster care.
• Eliminates the SNAP-Ed program, a federally funded initiative designed to improve nutrition education and promote obesity prevention among eligible individuals and families.
• Eliminates SNAP eligibility for most qualified, legally present immigrants, including people approved for asylum and certain victims of domestic violence or sex trafficking.

Higher Education

The bill severely undermines access to higher education, stripping our children of the opportunity they were promised in the American Dream by cutting $300 billion of federal support for higher education students and borrowers.

The bill also impacts enrollees in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan. The SAVE Plan, like other income-driven repayment plans, calculates your monthly payment amount based on your income and family size. In addition, the SAVE Plan has unique benefits that will lower payments for many borrowers.

Nearly 238,000 North Carolina enrollees in the SAVE plan would see their student loan payments double or triple. It forces almost 11,000 North Carolina students into private loans. And the bill puts an end to borrower defense relief for students who are scammed by predatory colleges, such as the 52,000 defrauded students in North Carolina who’ve successfully recouped their losses.

For Pell grant recipients, this bill would kick 1.5 million students, or 20% of all Pell grant recipients, off the program. This will impact students at every college and university, but especially our students at HBCUs. 73% of HBCU students are Pell grant recipients and Pell grants are essential in helping our kids achieve the academic excellence we owe them.

The bill also:

• Raises the cost of student loan repayment. The new income-driven repayment plan contains unpredictable spikes in loan amounts, including a marriage penalty, and is likely to drive more borrowers into default.
• Weakens protections for borrowers who become unemployed, whose schools defraud them, or who face a sudden college closure.
• Limits access to federal aid for graduate students, likely leading more borrowers to pursue riskier private loans or forego further education.

Taxes

While the bill provides no tax on tips or overtime, what Republicans have not said is that these provisions expire in 2028, and individuals are capped on how much they can receive. Meanwhile, the tax breaks for the wealthiest in our country are made permanent. This budget prioritizes the wants of billionaires over the needs of North Carolinians.

This will harm single mothers who can’t afford to see a doctor. Children who are going to bed hungry. Rural communities whose hospitals will close. Veterans who served our country, but we won’t support. These are the people this bill betrays. I will never stop fighting to protect my constituents and communities, but many of my colleagues today have shown that they won't.

I will continue working with our local and state partners, including the Governor's Office, and the City of Charlotte, and Mecklenburg County governments as we navigate this critical time for our district. As always, if you have any issues with federal services, please don't hesitate to reach out to my offices and my staff will be happy to assist you however they can.

You can read the full text of the bill here.