We the undersigned demand NO CUTS to Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax giveaways for billionaires and wealthy corporations!

As you know, the incoming Trump administration and the Republican congressional leaders plan to extend and potentially expand the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that is set to expire at the end of 2025.

We write to urge you to use the expiration of these provisions as an opportunity to address long-standing inequities in our tax code and to raise more revenue to meet our country’s current obligations and address critical unmet needs. And we also urge you not to reduce federal funding to the Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP programs.

No matter what we look like or where we’re from, all Pennsylvanians believe in caring for their family and community. People in our state work hard, giving our all as teachers, delivery drivers, and nurses, volunteering at the local food bank or doing neighborhood clean-ups. And while we believe in relying on ourselves and our families first, we know that our success as individuals, families, and communities also depends on a vibrant public sector that educates our young people; provides vital public goods such as transportation infrastructure, protection from pollution and climate change, basic medical and other research; and that creates a safety net protecting those of us who suffer from unemployment, disability, poverty, or illness.

Regardless of who we voted for in November, the vast majority of Pennsylvanians believe in a government that accomplishes these goals and is paid for by a tax system that asks everyone to pay their fair share. They oppose—and did not vote in 2024 for—giving tax cuts to the wealthiest households or corporations.

Our recent poll powerfully shows that voters of all parties believe that taxes are unfair in the United States today. A majority of voters believe that our tax system takes too much from working people, while allowing ultra-rich Americans and wealthy corporations to pay too little.

We found that:
- 76% of Pennsylvanians support raising taxes on wealthy corporations.
- 76% support increasing taxes on the wealthiest households.
- 77% support raising taxes on households earning more than $400,000 a year.
- 57% support raising the federal corporate tax rate from the 21% level set in the TCJA.

The TCJA was unpopular in 2017. And it remains so today, for good reason. The claims made on behalf of the TCJA have turned out to be false.
- The proponents of these tax cuts said big corporate tax cuts would trickle down, making significant increases in wages for workers; but the typical worker got nothing from it. 
- They said the bill would pay for itself; it actually increased the deficit by $2 trillion. 
- They said the tax cuts would create jobs; but the evidence doesn’t show that.

An extension of the TCJA would have even worse results. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says it would increase deficits by about $7.5 trillion over 10 years. And the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that President Trump’s tax plans would lead “to a tax cut for the richest 5 percent of Americans and a tax increase for the other 95 percent of Americans.”

Republican members of Congress have floated the idea of paying for an extension of the TCJA by reducing federal expenditures for Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP. Pennsylvania voters, like voters in other states, strongly support these programs and with good reason. Medicaid provides critical support for millions of Pennsylvanians.

In Pennsylvania, Medicaid provides health care to
- more than 2 million adults.
- more than 1.4 million children (including 200,000 served by CHIP).
- more than 1.4 million people who need mental or behavioral health care.
- more than 400,000 seniors who receive care in nursing homes, assisted living facilities or, in some cases, at home.
- more than 300,000 Pennsylvanians with substance use disorder.
And more than 2 million Pennsylvanians rely on SNAP to pay for their groceries.

Reductions in Medicaid and CHIP spending of the kind being talked about recently in Washington, DC, threaten to cost the state of Pennsylvania between 2 billion and 5 billion dollars each year. That would leave our state government with the difficult choice of trying to replace some federal dollars with money from Pennsylvania taxpayers or drastically reducing eligibility for Medicaid or coverage for medical care. While we would hope the state would provide some funding to replace that lost, it simply does not have the resources to make up for the kinds of Medicaid reductions being bandied about now.

Nor should it. No candidate for office, in either party, campaigned on a plan to devastate health care for millions of people in our state or any other state.

So, we urge you to oppose extending, let alone expanding, the tax giveaways to billionaires and wealthy corporations. And we urge you to reject any attempt to pay for even a portion of these giveaways by taking health care away from not only millions of Pennsylvanians but tens of millions of people across the country.