Just one Republican of conscience could have stopped the travesty that is Trump’s bill | Opinion

All but three Senate Republicans — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky — bear responsibility for passing Donald Trump’s horror of a spending and tax bill, which is anything but beautiful.

The Star’s editorial board condemns both the rush to vote and the devastation of anti-poverty nutrition programs and cuts to Medicaid within this bill.

Despite the unpopularity of the bill with the public, it narrowly passed the Republican-controlled Senate with a 51-50 vote and now moves back to the House. That Vice President JD Vance cast the deciding vote means that even one more Republican of conscience could have prevented this travesty.

Why the hurry to push through the 940-page bill by July 4, as Trump is determined to do? No reason, other than that Republicans don’t want anyone to read it. That, and he loves a parade.

After the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2, 1776 even Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence got some edits before being adopted on the Fourth. This monstrosity, however, needs a lot more than some tweaks.

It would extend $4 trillion in tax cuts that heavily favor the wealthy. It would pay to begin construction of the “Golden Dome” missile defense and fund the extremely expensive mass deportation of many migrants who are not criminals. Once again it is the poor who will pay, with more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the nutrition program that used to be called food stamps. That it is the poorest who will subsidize the richest is never acknowledged, much less explained, beyond the talking point that Medicaid had to be reformed to make sure the right people get it.

We cannot pretend to be too surprised that Senate Republicans from Missouri and Kansas did nothing to protect their constituents. As their colleague Bernie Sanders said of what he’s calling the worst piece of legislation in modern American history, “This is not a gift to the billionaire class. They paid for it.”

Our GOP officials voted for a spending package that will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Worse, a CBO analysis found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. And it isn’t only those on Medicaid who would suffer.

With more Americans uninsured, hospitals would simply pass on those costs to the rest of us. And that’s to say nothing of the human costs to families and communities.

So thanks for nothing, Sens. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran of Kansas. And Josh Hawley, you say Missourians will face those harms later than those in some other states. But do other Americans matter so little?

Not just history but the immediate future will show how callous lawmakers were to slash funding to these important lifelines for folks struggling to make ends meet.

Senate Republicans had many chances to make this bill more humane and said no.

They said no to a Democratic amendment that would have carved out protections for SNAP benefits for families with children under 14.

They rejected another amendment that would have raised taxes on the very wealthiest Americans, specifically to fund the rural hospitals that would be hit hardest by the Medicaid cuts.

Prior federal funding cuts have already overwhelmed area food banks. SNAP cuts would be catastrophic, food bank experts have told us. In a recent conversation with our board, Harvesters President Stephen Davis said all Americans should be concerned about the future of any funding cuts that could affect the nation’s food supply chain.

Harvesters serves 27 counties in the region — 10 in Missouri and 17 in Kansas, Davis said. In those counties, there are 375,000 people that are considered food insecure.

Now, the bill that even Josh Hawley called immoral before he decided to vote for it anyway goes back to the House.

So today would be a good time to call your U.S. representatives and remind them that there are some things that are more important than loyalty to a president.