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A group of women stand together with fists up in the parking lot of a neighborhood store.
Community standing together in Alamance County.

Square up: Responding to the Backwards Budget Bill Together

Everyone will be impacted by this backwards budget bill.

Every one – hardworking moms, dads making ends meet, grandmas and grandpas on a fixed income, innocent children and babies who just got here, young adults trying to make it in the world, teens trying to get by and grow up – every single hard working, regular, day-to-day person will be impacted by this bill.
 
If you don’t happen to be one of the eight billionaires who live in NC — YOUR LIFE IS GOING TO BE HARDER because of the historically bad, backwards, brutal budget that was passed by Congress earlier this year.
 
Join us in learning what will happen — and what we can do about it right now!

Everyone has a role to play in pushing back.

Here's what you should know:

The federal budget passed in July 2025 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” (or H.R. 1) — will make drastic cuts to many key programs. It takes our hard-earned tax dollars away from our communities — our schools, our farmers, our hospitals — and gives it directly to the wealthy elite in the form of tax cuts. We call this the “backwards budget” because it is taking money away from everyday working people and funneling it into the pockets of the super-rich. 

A graphic showing that the federal budget bill cuts to funding for SNAP, Medicaid, and the ACA Marketplace are equal to the tax cuts it makes for the wealthiest people in the US. Image from the NC Budget and Tax Center.
Image from NC Budget and Tax Center.
What is going to happen to us in NC?

Click the headers below to jump to more information.

140,000 NC families will lose SNAP & WIC (a.k.a. Food Stamps)

600,000 North Carolinians will lose Medicaid & everyone will see higher health insurance premiums

Children going hungry at school and losing resources for critical programs like special education, school nurses, and more

Loss of hospitals, health care, and food assistance for those trying to recover from Hurricane Helene

Job losses and a devastated economy

Impacts to SNAP & WIC (a.k.a. Food Stamps)
  • Extended work requirements for food stamps 
  • Fewer eligibility options and safety net programs 
  • Limited food stamp benefit growth 
  • Less subsidy revenue for farms 
  • States shoulder the extra costs

SNAP serves over 40 million Americans, including 1.4 million North Carolinians, most of whom are children. It provides vital food assistance to working families, hungry children, aging seniors, and adults with disabilities. This bill cuts roughly $186 billion from SNAP – the largest cut to food assistance in our nation’s history. SNAP recipients are diverse, covering all geographic areas, all identities, all backgrounds, including 1 in 6 people living in rural areas or small towns.

Even if you don’t receive SNAP or WIC, these cuts will impact you! Especially in rural areas, grocery stores and farmer’s markets are likely to lose money and possibly go out of business because of reduced food sales caused by these cuts. They may be forced to raise food prices even more to make up for the lost business, making all of our lives harder.

Impacts to Health Care
  • Hospital closures
  • Job losses
  • Reduced access to care
  • Rising elder care and child care costs
  • Overwhelming paperwork and verification requirements
  • Increased insurance premiums and cost of care

In 2023, we were finally able to expand Medicaid after more than a decade-long fight. Now those 630,000 North Carolinians who recently gained coverage — and all 2.6 million North Carolinians on Medicaid — are at risk. The new budget add extensive work requirements 

Just because you aren’t on Medicaid doesn’t mean your health care wouldn’t be affected by the bill. Hospitals are warning that the steep cuts to Medicaid could force some hospitals — particularly in rural locations — to close their doors, limit services, and reduce staff. 

Impacts to children and public schools
  • Loss of school nurses
  • Loss of services and equipment for children with disabilities
  • Loss of school counselors & psychologists
  • Loss of speech, physical, & occupational therapy services
  • Loss of school lunch programs

Medicaid plays a critical role in funding school-based healthcare, supporting more than $7.5 billion in school health services every year. In fact, Medicaid is the fourth-largest federal funding stream for K-12 public schools. These funds are used to provide a broad array of services to students that supplement the resources available to the district as a whole. This includes services to students with disabilities; funding for school nursing, counseling, & psychology; funding for speech, physical, and occupational therapy; and many many more critical programs. School districts in rural counties are the vast majority of those expecting to be impacted by these cuts. 

A study by the Urban Institute estimated that the House bill’s cuts to SNAP would put at least 16 million students at risk of losing access to their school or state’s free school meal program. The impact of SNAP cuts would extend far beyond the SNAP program itself, as every $1 in cuts made to SNAP for families with children costs society between $14 and $20. 

Impacts to WNC Recovery
  • The number of people needing Medicaid and SNAP in WNC has skyrocketed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene
  • Three rural hospitals in WNC are at risk of closing
  • These impacts are true for other communities who have experienced climate disasters — any of us could be next.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene 169,000 SNAP applications were received (the highest number since Hurricane Florence in 2018). All 25 impacted WNC counties had higher SNAP enrollment after six months than immediately prior to the storm. A total enrollment increase of 13,400 since September 2024. Every $1 invested in SNAP generates $1.50 – $1.80 that is reinvested into local economies, this provides critical stimulus to businesses and producers recovering from the Hurricane.

Introduction of work requirements for Medicaid disproportionately impacts working people who have lost jobs and wages due to Hurricane Helene, which is currently almost 30% of the population of WNC. The loss of medicaid funds mean that three rural WNC hospitals are now at risk of closing. These kinds of impacts aren’t unique to WNC — they are a risk for any community that experiences climate related disaster. No one knows who will be impacted next.

Impacts to the cost of living and our quality of life overall
  • Increased Inequality
  • Wealthy will get wealthier
  • Poor will get poorer
  • Limited economic growth opportunities
  • Reduced incomes
  • Massive cuts to schools in the form of a federal voucher program

Public education and healthcare are among the top 5 employers in almost every county in North Carolina. The amount of cuts that were included in the federal budget are likely to cause job loss of many jobs in healthcare and education. The reduction in SNAP/WIC funds are likely to hurt local grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and agriculture. When you add the drastic increase in health care costs that will happen as a result of cuts to funding for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), this budget will mean that all of us who depend on every paycheck are going to find it a lot harder to make ends meet.

Join our movement to win a government that works for all of us!

We deserve a government that works for us, not just for the ultra wealthy.
Every elected official has a role to play in stopping these cuts and protecting our communities.

We believe that local government should be our first and most important line of defense. We need our county commissioners, city councilors, and local representatives to be champions for our communities. We need them to stand in the gap, protect the people they were elected to serve, and hold the line with us.

We’re calling for local elected officials to commit to protecting our communities from the pending cuts of the government shutdown and the backwards budget bill that Congress passed in July 2025 and to show that they work for the people, NOT just a handful of billionaires!

Join our movement by completing the listening survey below!

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