The more we hear about President Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”— his name for the massive budget reconciliation bill that would enshrine into law many of his top priorities —the harder it is to escape the conclusion that there’s something deeply wrong with our nation’s spiritual health. This bill, which passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on a party-line vote, serves as a thermometer — and the reading we’re getting back is telling us that the United States of America is suffering from a dangerous fever.
Sojourners has made the case many times that a budget is a moral document. Legislation like Trump’s reconciliation bill is much the same, in that its choices about where the government should spend money and where it should cut spending say a great deal about our nation’s moral values. Just as families make spending choices by balancing their needs and wants, our federal budget reflects who and what we value. It has significant consequences for who goes hungry, who has access to medical care, and who can travel safely, not to mention how many bombs there are for drone strikes or how much rebar for border walls. Viewed in these moral terms, the “big, beautiful bill” is a big, ugly bill that inverts biblical values.
One consistent theme throughout the Bible is God’s concern for those who are marginalized or vulnerable in their society. In the Bible, this was often the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor. The Bible is replete with rebukes of those who ignore their needs and the spiritual peril of greed: Proverbs 14:31 teaches that “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” The prophet Isaiah warns us: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless” (10:1-2). Jesus makes it clear that “no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mathew 6:24). Paul goes further, writing that the “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10).
In every generation we must ask: Who are our present-day equivalents of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor? Who are those we consider to be beyond our circle of concern? As we review this budget and think about our current moment, we should remember people living in the quicksand of poverty; migrants seeking shelter from persecution, violence, and economic crisis; children and families facing hunger and food insecurity; and people without a home.
If we take seriously the Bible’s call to consider the economic welfare of these and other vulnerable folks, we must ask whether their needs are being prioritized in our federal budget. After all, the government’s spending decisions are made with our money and are nothing less than a reflection of our collective values as a society. That means we’re on the hook for what our government does and does not do. These decisions are being made in our name, generally as Americans and particularly as Christians.
In the past week or so, Republican lawmakers have fleshed out the broad framework of the reconciliation bill with more specific numbers and policies. Some of the most alarming details include around $260 billion in cuts to SNAP (formerly called food stamps), at least $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid and affordable healthcare, and stripping away the Child Tax Credit from many immigrant families. Overall, the changes to health care programs in the bill are estimated to mean roughly 15 million people will lose health coverage and become uninsured by 2034. The bill would also impose more stringent and harmful work requirements on Medicaid and SNAP beneficiaries, despite the fact that most current recipients who can work already have jobs and ample evidence showing that more work requirements will only push people off these programs.
As you take in these numbers, I encourage you to look beyond the statistics and think instead of the people with real and often dire needs. Imagine how cuts to the programs they depend on will impact their lives. Sharon Parrot, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to advance economic justice, noted that the bill “will drive up hunger and deepen poverty, including among children, and take access to life-saving health care away from millions of people,” imposing a particular burden on low-income and immigrant families.
As devastating as these cuts would be to some of society’s most vulnerable people, they are dwarfed by tax cuts disproportionately benefiting the richest Americans, cuts that would blow an even larger hole in our already massive budget deficit. According to the independent and nonpartisan organization Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the bill as currently written would increase the national debt by at least $3.3 trillion over the next decade — and the true number could easily rise to $4.8 trillion by 2038. All told, the reconciliation bill includes $1.1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of households.
Skyrocketing our national deficit makes a mockery of fiscal responsibility, something many Republicans in Congress have championed; instead, the new bill gives wealthy individuals and corporations tax breaks. Coupled with DOGE-cuts to the IRS, which weaken the IRS’s ability to collect revenue and prevent tax evasion, these measures grow — not shrink — our national deficit. To highlight just how regressive this package has become, Parrot pointed out that the $1.1 trillion in tax cuts that wealthy households will receive would pay for the combined cuts that will be made to Medicaid and SNAP.
These aren’t the only provisions in the bill that reflect a badly misaligned set of moral values and priorities. The bill also includes $46.5 billion to resume construction of Trump’s border wall and billions more to hire thousands of new Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to implement Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. It also would institute a $1,000 fee on migrants seeking asylum for the first time in U.S. history, imposing a tax on people seeking shelter from harm. The bill would increase defense spending by roughly $150 billion, which combined with annual defense spending would push this year’s military spending above $1 trillion for the first time ever. Last but not least, the bill makes significant cuts to tax credits passed during Joe Biden’s presidency for climate-friendly energy sources such as electric vehicles and wind and solar energy — threatening much of the progress on climate change that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was meant to achieve.
In response to the current reconciliation package, I imagine Isaiah directing some prophetic words to Congress and Trump, perhaps: “Woe to those who make unjust laws.” As much as Trump campaigned on some of these misguided priorities, such as mass deportations, other parts of this ugly bill were nowhere in his speeches or rallies. For instance, Trump didn’t say, “Vote for me, and I promise I’ll cut $800 billion from Medicaid.” But I also think Isaiah and other biblical prophets would have some words of woe for all of us. After all, if the budget troubles us, what are we going to do about it?
Now is the time to pressure Congress to repent from this immoral bill and instead support a budget that reflects our core civic and religious values of economic opportunity and justice, and dignity for all. We can appeal to the conscience of members of Congress and, in many cases, appeal to our shared faith.
For those of us with legislators who voted for the bill, it’s up to us to flood representatives’ phone lines and inboxes with our righteous anger at the priorities they’re claiming to pursue on behalf of their constituents; we must demand that they stop rewarding the wealthy at the expense of struggling and vulnerable people. On June 10, alongside over 20 denominations and faith-based organizations, we will take that call directly to Congress with a vigil and advocacy day at the U.S. Capitol. And as we near Pentecost Sunday, we can pray we will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to advocate relentlessly and fearlessly to defeat this immoral budget and replace it with one that reflects our moral values and priorities.
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on X @revadamtaylor.
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