News & Updates

The proposed Budget and Tax Reconciliation Bill would cut funding from such programs as the SNAP and the Community Eligibility program that help the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest.

Here’s what you should know:

Every child in the Wilkinsburg, Pittsburgh, and Woodland Hills school districts receives breakfast and lunch because these school districts participate in a program that bases charges for school meals on the broader eligibility of children in the school and/or district. In these districts, over 60 percent of the children are in families that rely on programs like SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

(TANF is a federal program that provides grants to states to help low-income families with children. TANF funds are used to provide cash assistance, child care, and other services designed to support families in achieving self-sufficiency, such as job preparation, work, and child care assistance.)

The CEP program allows eligible high-poverty schools, groups of schools, or school districts to offer free breakfast and lunch to all enrolled students, regardless of individual household income. It means that children can qualify without their parent/guardian having to complete masses of separate paperwork with the school district.

Instead of collecting individual free/reduced meal applications from every family, schools participating in CEP use a percentage of “identified students” (those who are directly certified for free meals through programs like SNAP, TANF, foster care, homelessness, etc.) to determine their reimbursement from the USDA. The program insures that all students receive free breakfast and lunch, which:

• Increases meal participation.
• Simplifies meal counting and claiming for the district.
• Eliminates student meal debt.
• Reduces the stigma associated with receiving free or reduced-price meals

The budget proposal calls for a direct $12 billion cut in funding for CEP over 10 years and a $ 230 billion cut in SNAP benefits.

Proposed budget cuts:

• Changes to eligibility: These cuts would be achieved by adjusting the school qualification for CEP and potentially requiring individual income verification of every child for school meal programs. This could result in over 24,000 schools serving more than 12 million children becoming ineligible for the program.
• Impact on SNAP: Proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) could also indirectly impact CEP eligibility, as many children qualify for free school meals through SNAP.
• Downstream effects: These changes could lead to a decrease in the number of schools eligible for CEP and reduced federal reimbursement for qualifying schools.

This proposed bill also cuts $880 billion from Medicaid (health coverage for low-income people). This means that hospitals will raise their costs to cover the expense of treating the sick and injured who no longer have Medicaid. These cuts would hurt millions: 42 million Americans rely on SNAP, and 72 million depend on Medicaid. And not everyone on Medicaid is unemployed. Some people require Medicaid to help them stay employed.

Despite what some say, these cuts will harm real people, including seniors and people with disabilities. They claim the cuts reduce “waste and fraud,” while also pushing to extend $5.3 trillion in tax breaks with no stated cost.

Everything has a cost.

This bill would shift the cost of health care for uninsured people to those who are insured, and to medical facilities and hospitals themselves. Contrary to some statements (“Everybody dies…” “Get a job and use that health insurance!” and “The best health insurance is a job…”) not every employer offers insurance (about half do), and not everyone can work!

While not every employer offers health insurance, especially among smaller businesses, the majority of workers in the U.S. are indeed employed by companies that do provide access to employer-sponsored health benefits. Employer-sponsored insurance remains the primary source of health coverage for the non-elderly population in the U.S., covering about 165 million people in 2023. As of May 2025, the Labor Force Participation Rate in the US was 62.4%. This means that 62.4% of the civilian noninstitutional population aged 16 and over were either working or actively seeking employment.