May 26, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: So the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the omnibus spending bill, passed the House of Representatives on May 22. Trump touted the deep spending cuts as the cure for “out of control spending.” It passed by one vote. Our Ben Cline voted for it.
This is the spending bill that will cause millions of Americans, currently on Medicaid to lose their medical insurance. Some groups will lose Medicare coverage. The SNAP program that provides meals and food for school children and the elderly will be deeply cut. The OBBBA kills most existing and future funding to slow and stop climate change by slowing greenhouse gas emissions, causing our children to bear the brunt of accelerating global warming. These cuts in the OBBBA and the ongoing slashing of government services, the effects of which we are yet to feel, were all “necessary to balance the budget,” according to Trump.
Surprise! It won’t balance the budget. Experts predict these cuts will add $3.8 trillion to the deficit (Federal Budget Office). One big reason: OBBBA lowers income taxes for the wealthy. If your income is $5,000,000, you get a tax break of $300,000. The higher your income, the more you get (Trump’s friend Elon is ecstatic).
Our representative, Ben Cline, surely was aware of these realities in the budget he voted for. If he had raised an objection in Congress that the people in his district would suffer in order to provide for a tax break that favors the wealthy, we would applaud him. He could have altered the legislation by voting “present,” thereby stopping passage and forcing reconsideration. He didn’t.
Doesn’t Ben Cline care about the people of Virginia??
PHYLLIS and FRED FEVRIER Rockbridge County
