Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

It is shameful that we have lost our moral compass as a nation. The Reconciliation bill voted in by the House last week is scandalous with its exorbitant increases for the Pentagon and a mass deportation apparatus that has been cruelly tearing families apart, disappearing our neighbors, and denying immigrants’ due process. It is outrageous that elected officials would vote to strip health care coverage and food stamps for millions of families, already suffering, to enable tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. Elected officials who fail to stand up to this administration and its scapegoating of immigrants must be held accountable for this cruelty.

—Jean Stokan, Mercy Justice Team; 28 May 2025

Respond to Congress on the House’s budget bill

Last week in an overnight session, the House of Representatives passed a 1,100-page budget bill that makes disastrous cuts to basic human needs services, especially Medicaid and SNAP (a.k.a. “food stamps”), as well as clean energy tax credits that have been making significant headway in the fight against climate change. In exchange, the bill makes permanent massive tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and inflates the budgets for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, making weapons and violence top budget priorities.

Please use the draft email in the grey box at right (below on mobile devices) to tell your representative how you feel about their vote (thanks for NO votes; shame for YES votes) and to urge your senators to vote NO when the bill comes before them. The profound harms being wrought on millions of people must be named and remembered in our adamant resistance to this bill.

Background

The budget reconciliation bill is full of atrocious items that run directly against Mercy values, Catholic social teaching, and common ethical principles. Its cruelty runs the gamut, and its injustices are manifold for immigrants if it becomes law. Immigrant children can be detained indefinitely and are subject to invasive examinations. Those seeking humanitarian relief or asylum are charged prohibitive financial penalties to process legal paperwork. The ICE detention budget will be multiplied thirteen-fold. Sixty billion dollars are allocated for a border wall and for Border Patrol personnel and equipment. Numerous tax credits and services for education and healthcare, including the Child Tax Credit, will be eliminated for children whose parents don’t have a Social Security number, as well as SNAP eligibility for lawfully present immigrants.

Immigrants aren’t the only ones affected by this bill’s budgetary shenanigans. As mentioned in previous Mercy action alerts, women across the U.S. are disproportionately dependent on support programs due to systemic, gender-based inequality in employment and family care responsibilities. Women in rural areas, women of color, people living with disabilities or chronic medical conditions, and members of marginalized communities like Indigenous and LGBTQ communities are particularly vulnerable to cuts in these life-saving programs. Rural hospitals remain open due to payments from Medicaid, and huge numbers of families stay just outside of hunger due to SNAP funds.

The House’s budget proposes a $163 billion increase to military spending in the 2026 fiscal year alone, resulting in the nation’s first-ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget. An equivalent amount would be cut from Medicaid and SNAP, resulting in 13.7 million people losing access to health care coverage and 11 million people going hungry. The Institute for Policy Studies has issued a state-by-state analysis of human needs spending lost to this budget’s military increases.

All these cruelties are part of the administration’s plans drawn from Project 2025. In addition, the bill is constructed as a Trojan horse to further compound injustices and facilitate their perpetration without the encumbrance of judicial oversight. One profoundly troubling provision hidden within the bill (Section 70302) essentially stipulates that courts cannot punish anyone found to be in contempt when they fail to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order. This section is effective on all contempt citations ever issued, past or future. In effect, anyone can ignore a court order without suffering any consequences. This small paragraph is an existential danger to democracy in our country.