The Honorable Marsha Blackburn and the Honorable Bill Hagerty
The Honorable John Thune
Senate Majority Leader
S-230, The Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Mike Crapo
Chairman, Committee on Finance
219 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Charles A. Schumer
Senate Minority Leader
S-221, The Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable Ron Wyden
Ranking Member, Committee on Finance
219 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
We implore you, VOTE NO to the federal budget bill sent to you by the House of Representatives. If enacted, this legislation will cause irreparable harm to the entire State of Tennessee and especially to our most vulnerable citizens, including people with disabilities, the elderly, children, and many struggling families.
Tennessee’s economy relies heavily on federal funds. 25.6% of Tennessee’s State Budget comes from federal dollars. The U.S. House of Representatives voted for $715 billion in cuts to federal health programs and many other essential federal funds sent down to the states that must be restored before the budget is enacted. These and other proposed reductions would decimate the FY25-26 budget created and approved by Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature.
The federal funds we receive have helped Tennessee bring industry and good-paying jobs to local communities. The proposed budget cuts, combined with economic uncertainty in this new, tariff-based economy, are already damaging Tennessee businesses, especially small, family-owned businesses.
Tennessee won’t be able to sustain this kind of blow to our economy. There will be harsh repercussions to our TennCare program and to the 1.6 Million Tennesseans (26% of our population) who rely on essential medical services for their very survival. Tennesseans are hard-working people, but we aren’t a wealthy state. Even if the Tennessee legislature institutes new taxes, it will take years to recover, and many of our fellow Tennesseans will die before then.
We are a diverse board representing many differing political views. Our job, not unlike your own, is to work as a team to implement cost-effective services that protect and support vulnerable Tennesseans and families caring for loved ones with disabilities. The families we serve work and pay their taxes, but they can’t survive without essential supplemental assistance. All of the people in our programs have severe disabilities. Even with help from TennCare and agencies like UCP, many of our families lead impoverished lives because of immense medical needs and the high cost of home-based care. When the federal money goes away, the high costs won’t cease. They will be pushed down to struggling Tennessee families.
Among examples that come to mind include a UCP Board member who is the mother of an adult son with severe cerebral palsy. Her husband recently passed away, so her job as a Metro bus driver is the sole support for her and her son. We are also thinking of the mom of a little boy with extreme developmental disabilities who is holding down two minimum wage jobs just to cover the rising cost of rent – yet she still can’t make ends meet.
Thousands of Tennesseans with disabilities have received wheelchair ramps built by our organization’s volunteers and partners. We support aging husbands and wives who have worked hard all their lives, believed in the American dream, and are now losing everything they worked for due to the high cost of caring full-time for a spouse who has had a stroke, heart attack, cancer, Alzheimer’s, or other disabling condition. The average annual household income for families in our wheelchair ramp program is $27,278. At some point, they will need hospitalization or Medicaid-funded skilled nursing care – care that this federal budget will deny them.
Our agency will undoubtedly lose State contracts in the face of such ruthless federal budget cuts. Tennessee is already losing rural hospitals and nursing homes across the state. The health care industry contributes over $21 Billion to the economy of Nashville alone. Federal funding is essential to sustaining this industry, as well as community-based healthcare and living supports for people with disabilities.
This federal budget is nothing less than oppressive taxation of the very lives of vulnerable people we have a responsibility to protect. On top of immense damage this budget will wreak in the lives of real American families, this budget doesn’t even reduce the federal deficit because of tax breaks for a small group of wealthy people with the highest per capita incomes in the world – some of whom are billionaires whose hourly income is higher than the entire lifetime incomes of the households our agency serves.
As a Board of Directors, we are all business people. We know a bad budget when we see one, and this is the worst. Please toss it in the trash can where it belongs and go back to work on a federal budget that actually serves the American people.