A week after the Republican-led House sent its $4 trillion budget bill to President Donald Trump, California Rep. Mark DeSaulnier vowed to fight the most harmful provisions of what he and other Democrats are calling the Big Ugly Bill.
One of 22 California members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, DeSaulnier held a virtual town hall late Thursday afternoon to help his constituents in San Francisco’s East Bay understand what’s in the bill, how it’s likely to affect them and what he and his Democratic colleagues intend to do about it.
DeSaulnier, who calls climate change “the existential threat,” said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was “jammed through both houses of Congress” with no transparency or time for careful evaluation. “This is definitely not the way to do what is one of the biggest pieces of legislation in the country’s history,” he said.
The congressman listed the many ways the bill will harm tens of millions of Americans, from stripping away health care and school lunches to eliminating clean energy tax cuts and raising electricity costs.
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DeSaulnier, who was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia soon after being elected to Congress in 2015, has championed policies that protect health and the environment. His district, California’s 10th, is the fifth wealthiest in the United States, yet 131,000 residents will lose their health care and 18,000 households who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will lose their benefits.
Programs like SNAP benefit everyone, DeSaulnier said, particularly young people, whose cognitive development depends on good nutrition. “We all benefit from that, because they go on to be sustaining, successful members of American society.”
What Trump called “a sweeping legislative triumph” will add $2.4 trillion to deficits over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The benefits of those tax cuts will not be evenly distributed.
Federal and state in-kind benefits—which provide services like Medicaid and SNAP rather than cash to eligible recipients—would decrease household resources by $1 trillion, according to the CBO, primarily because federal spending on benefits provided through these programs will be lower and states’ budget responses to these cuts will further reduce household resources.
All of this is to pay for the largest tax cut in the country’s history to the wealthiest Americans at a time when the country’s wealth is increasingly concentrated in the top 1 and 10 percent, DeSaulnier said.
“This concentration is wildly dangerous for American democracy,” he said, noting that it will inhibit hard-working, talented people from being able to contribute to society and influence decisions that affect them.
Since DeSaulnier left the GOP 20 years ago, he said, the once fiscally responsible party has become “radicalized” and is now supported by people who benefit from a high national deficit.
At the same time Trump and the Republicans’ massive budget legislation cuts benefits that are critical to people’s health and welfare, he said, its attack on clean energy programs will raise their utility bills.
“Taking away the clean energy credits that we put a lot of work into is raising our cost of energy, and particularly electricity costs,” said DeSaulnier, who serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about how the administration plans to help families cope with higher bills.
DeSaulnier, who formerly chaired transportation committees in the California State Assembly and Senate, wrote two amendments to the budget bill to protect a $2.5 billion electric vehicle charging infrastructure program and to comply with a court order to release the funds.
His proposed amendments, along with hundreds of others filed by Democrats, were blocked by Republicans.
Trump broke his promise to improve the lives of Americans by signing into law this “deeply unpopular bill” that will raise energy costs, threaten grid reliability and increase the pollution that’s harming people’s health and the planet, said Joanna Slaney, Environmental Defense Fund’s vice president for political and government affairs, in a statement.
The president and his congressional allies are sidelining the largest and fastest-growing sources of new electricity in favor of dirty and finite fossil fuels, Slaney said.
The Bay Area has been a leader in clean energy innovation, with cities in the region committing to reduce climate pollution by transitioning buildings to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2040 and funding low-carbon modes of transportation, including electric vehicles and e-bikes.
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The repeal of tax credits that promote climate-friendly energy options like wind, solar and clean vehicles will hit the Bay Area particularly hard, DeSaulnier said. It will also have far-reaching consequences.
China has a high-quality electric vehicle that’s very affordable because it’s subsidized by the Chinese government, he said, adding that the only reason it’s not sold here is because of tariffs. “We have to really be smarter about investing in clean energy and renewable fuels and alternative vehicles.”
DeSaulnier admitted that he was “a little shellshocked” when Trump was re-elected. Now, he said, as he wrapped up his 236th town hall, the key is to “fight like hell” in courts, Congress and election campaigns for a better way to govern.
“I’m willing to spend whatever time I have alive and whatever time I have in office to fight what’s happening in this country right now and get back to a country where we take care of each other,” he said.
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Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal and Association of Food Journalists.
