Kentuckians work hard every day to take care of their families and strive for a better life, but high prices and low wages are making it harder to get ahead. This year, lawmakers have a unique opportunity to provide relief by passing a state budget that prioritizes the working class and puts Kentuckians over cuts.

Instead, they’ve introduced House Bill 500, a budget bill that proposes harmful cuts to vital public programs, despite leaving hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue unspent and billions more in the state’s reserve.

The bill continues to underfund public schools, cuts funding to higher education institutions, leaves an unexplained shortfall of over $220 million in Medicaid, fails to provide state retirees a cost-living-adjustment, and denies transformative investments in housing and universal preschool. Kentuckians deserve better. There is growing concern that lawmakers will fail to fund needed services so they can trigger more income tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthy.

The state budget is the most powerful tool we have for building a better Kentucky, but the current proposal fails to put Kentuckians over cuts. The good news is that this budget isn’t final and the House budget chair recently invited advocates to put their “best case forward.”