Congress Must Address Massive Deficiencies in OBBB
[Washington, D.C] BAC International President Timothy J. Driscoll issued the following statement today after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) in the U.S. Senate:
The OBBB reconciliation bill that passed the Senate today represents the largest transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1% in our country’s history. This irresponsible bill will balloon our national debt by over three trillion dollars in giveaways to the wealthiest while causing generational harm to our ability to invest in our nation’s most precious resource … its people.
It does so at the expense of access to healthcare for millions of Americans, protection of vital federal programs that keep our food, water and workplaces safe, slashing food assistance for nearly 3 million Americans, and the abandonment of federal support for critical energy infrastructure projects that employ hundreds of thousands of construction workers. Congress must act quickly and decisively to address these deficiencies.
The proposed cuts to Medicaid and federal support for state health exchanges threaten to bankrupt millions of Americans who will lose their insurance coverage and cause drastic reductions of service to health care facilities in underserved communities, particularly rural communities. Faced with dramatically diminished federal support health care providers will inevitably shift costs by increasing charges to private insurance plans, including the multiemployer health plans that provide healthcare coverage for millions of construction workers and their families.
The bill as written promises to undermine the financial security of American families in numerous other ways. It will kill critical infrastructure jobs – putting construction workers on unemployment while crippling the nation’s energy independence and transportation grid. It will cause the national debt to explode, forcing unsustainable interest payments on to the backs of our children and grandchildren. And as the debt spirals higher, the impact of this bill will cause cuts to vital programs that working Americans count on. This bill is an attack on not only the workers and retirees of today, but on generations to come. Congress must act now to avert these disastrous provisions contained in the OBBB.