Budget

One of the main responsibilities of Congress is to determine how taxpayer dollars are distributed throughout the nation. Congressman Cohen works hard to make sure programs that will help the Ninth District receive adequate funding. He prioritizes ensuring economic security for hard-working American families and small businesses by providing adequate funding for the nation's transportation projects, Social Security and Medicare, and medical research.

He has consistently voted to protect funding for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to ensure that these programs remain solvent for future generations. He will not vote to make cuts to these programs because the Congressman believes that it would be inhumane to not provide aid to those individuals who need it the most.

Congressman Cohen voted NO to President Trump’s so-called “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” This bill is antithetical to everything he believes. The final bill slashes SNAP, Medicaid, and health care subsidies by more than $1.3 trillion, eliminates important tax credits for working families, and adds $4 trillion to the national debt while funding tax giveaways for millionaires, billionaires, high-income earners, and wealthy corporations.

Some of the bill’s most harmful provisions:

• End health coverage for millions — Slashes over $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, resulting in at least 17 million Americans losing their insurance.  
• Cut SNAP at historic levels — Cuts more than $190 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest in cut in the program’s history.
• Put hospitals and clinics at risk — Cuts funding for community health centers, nursing homes, and hospitals that rely heavily on Medicaid to serve low-income and elderly patients.
• Kill clean energy tax credits and raise costs — Eliminates clean energy tax credits for working- and middle-class homeowners and small businesses (e.g. rooftop solar, efficiency upgrades), phases out clean energy incentives for wind, solar, and EVs, and slashes investments in climate resilience, reversing critical sustainability gains.
• Divert national security funds to Trump’s private benefit — Allows national security funding to be used for retrofitting the luxury Qatari jet procured by Donald Trump, which some experts estimate could cost taxpayers up to $1 billion.
• Give billionaires a massive inheritance tax break — Eliminates the estate tax for the wealthiest 0.2% of Americans, delivering $211 billion in tax breaks on inheritances over $30 million.
• Shower big corporations with tax breaks — Delivers $918 billion in tax breaks to large corporations, including those that ship jobs overseas or replace American workers with AI.
• Explode the national debt to benefit the wealthy — Adds $4 trillion to the federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to finance tax breaks for billionaires, Big Oil, and multinational corporations.

In contrast to this budget bill, Congressman Cohen is proud to have supported budgets that prioritize job creation, financing public investments, strengthening the middle and working classes, and raising adequate revenue to meet budgetary needs while simultaneously restoring fairness to the tax code, protecting social insurance programs, and ensuring fiscal sustainability for years to come. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was passed through the budget reconciliation process in 2022. This bill aimed to help working, everyday Americans by:

• Lowering prescription drug costs: Reined in the soaring cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with pharmaceuticals, preventing excessive price hikes, and capping seniors' out-of-pocket costs at $2000 per year.
• Lowering health care costs: Extended the American Rescue Plan's enhanced ACA subsidies for three more years, locking in lower premiums that save 13 million people an average of $800 a year through 2025.
• Taking historic climate action and lower energy costs: Made the largest-ever American investment in climate, clean energy, environmental justice and domestic energy production and manufacturing. It will reduce our carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030 to put us on track to meet our climate goals, while also creating new clean jobs, enhancing our energy security and lowering energy costs for American families.
• Lowering the deficit by ensuring large corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share: Fully funded and reduced the deficit by $300 billion by instituting a 15 percent minimum tax rate on the largest corporations, enacting a 1 percent tax on tax-evading stock buybacks used to enrich wealthy shareholders, funding the IRS to go after wealthy tax evaders and corporations, and cracking down on Big Pharma price gouging.

Unfortunately, Trump and Republicans have ended, rolled back, or gutted many of these programs and continue to take actions that make life harder for Americans around the country.