NASHVILLE – A coalition of Tennessee nonprofits and advocacy organizations gathered Tuesday outside the Fred D. Thompson U.S. Courthouse in Nashville to protest a spending package currently making its way through the U.S. Senate.
The current form of the spending package, commonly referred to as the ‘One, Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ would drastically cut funding for programs such as Medicaid and SNAP.
According to information from the Tennessee Justice Center, Medicaid covers about one in five Tennesseans, including half of all children across the state. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the proposed cuts in this bill could leave more than 250,000 Tennesseans uninsured.
The combined cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would revoke a total of $1.3 trillion in benefits over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And the proposed cuts to Medicaid would represent the single largest cut in the history of the program’s existence.
“You simply cannot remove those kinds of resources and replace them with private initiatives, and you can’t do that without affecting tens of millions of Medicaid beneficiaries, including children, including people with disabilities, including the elderly in nursing homes,” said Gordon Bonnyman, co-founder of the Tennessee Justice Center.
Sponsors of the event included the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, as well as seven other organizations from around the state.
The organizations called on Tennessee Senators Bill Hagerty, R, and Marsha Blackburn, R, to vote against the spending package, which they said would disproportionately affect rural areas, such as Northeast Tennessee.
Ashlie Bell-Seibers, director of Family Voices of Tennessee, spoke at the event. Bell-Seibers grew up in rural Campbell County, and she said her family received Medicaid for a cancer diagnosis she received at age 17.
“Medicaid allowed me to become a first generation college graduate, and it allowed me to break the cycle of poverty in my family,” she said.
Bell-Seibers said many people in rural areas of Tennessee rely heavily on Medicaid to make ends meet.
“Rural Tennesseans are resourceful, they are frugal, they are stretching every penny they have to make ends meet, and it’s still not enough,” she said. “They’re working multiple jobs, but having a child with a disability or a complex medical need is something that you don’t understand unless it’s happened to you.”
Jeannine Carpenter, chief communications officer with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, said many rural grocery stores have incomes heavily reliant on SNAP benefits. For some, as much as 40% of their total income comes from SNAP benefits.
“So what we can anticipate is that if SNAP benefits were significantly cut in those rural areas, it wouldn’t just be the people who are part of the SNAP program who lose access to food as those stores close, so would all of the residents living in those communities,” she said.
What’s the status of this bill?
These cuts were approved by the U.S. House of Representatives May 22 in a 215-214 vote.
Tennessee Representative Diana Harshbarger, R-Dist. 1, voted for the bill, alongside every other Republican representative of Tennessee.
“This legislation delivers meaningful savings for Medicaid—putting it on a sustainable path to ensure the people it was intended for don’t lose their coverage,” Harshbarger said in a statement following the passage of the bill.
Rep. Harshbarger approves passage of ‘Big, beautiful bill’
She and other representatives, such as Tim Burchett, R-Dist. 2, have celebrated the bill’s passage as a furthering of the president’s agenda.
“President Trump and Congress have a mandate from the American people to implement the President’s agenda into law. I am proud to stand with President Trump in his fight to take back our country,” said Burchett in a statement.
However, whether President Trump intends to cut Medicaid remains unclear. Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a primary opponent of the Medicaid cuts, said in a social media post June 2 that the president opposes cutting Medicaid.
“Just had a great talk with President Trump about the Big, Beautiful Bill. He said again, NO MEDICAID BENEFIT CUTS,” Hawley said in a post on X.
Despite Hawley’s claim, it remains to be seen whether the final iteration of this bill will include the proposed cuts. Any changes to the bill will need to be hashed out between the House and the Senate, and could potentially draw the passage of the One ‘Big, Beautiful Bill Act’ way past its proposed July 4 deadline.