Sent to my US House Rep:
Dear Representative Huizenga,
I’m a constituent from Kalamazoo and I implore you to vote against the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” The cuts it makes to critical programs such as medicaid and SNAP are a travesty. Not to mention the outrageous funding increase for ICE, which is increasingly operating outside the law with no checks on its power. The amount this bill will increase our national debt is a disaster waiting to happen.
Do not fall for the Administration’s propaganda. This is a bad budget. Please stand up for your constituents and vote against this bill. Congress should pass a fair and responsible budget that helps the families and communities of our great nation, not one that slashes vital benefits to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.
Thank you. Again, please do what is right and moral and vote against this budget bill.
Sincerely,
Rev. Kenneth Arthur
Kalamazoo, MI 49009
Another BS response from my HR rep, received July 11, 2025:
Dear Mr. Arthur,
Thank you for contacting me regarding your views on H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. I always appreciate hearing from constituents and welcome this opportunity to respond.
On July 3rd, Congress delivered on the promises President Trump and House Republicans made to the American people by passing the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB).
Signed into law on the 4th of July, this transformative legislation will help Americans keep more of their hard-earned money instead of sending it to Washington, increase economic opportunity, strengthen our economy, unleash American energy, and secure our borders. The OBBB passed the House by a vote of 218-214 with my support.
Overall, the OBBB will positively impact individuals, families, and small business job creators across Southwest Michigan. In fact, the OBBB gives the biggest tax relief to low-income and working families. Meanwhile, the top 1% will actually pay more in taxes.
Provisions such as No Tax on Tips will help barbers, bartenders, baristas, stylists, servers, nail techs, taxi, uber, and lyft drivers, as well as food delivery drivers keep more of their hard-earned money.
The No Tax on Overtime provision will deliver bigger paychecks for a wide-variety of careers including police, firefighters, nurses, manufacturers, skilled trade workers, and utility workers.
Middle and Low-Income Seniors will see their tax burden significantly reduced by $6,000 for individuals and $12,000 for couples.
Families will see their Child Tax Credit increased by 10% going from $2,000 per child to $2,200 per child while indexing the tax credit to inflation.
Helps families with the rising cost of child care by expanding the Child & Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and Flexible Spending Arrangements (FSAs) as well as strengthening the Paid Family and Medical Leave Credit and the Employer-Provided Childcare Credit.
By enhancing the Adoption Tax Credit it will be easier for families to welcome children into their new forever home.
Permanently extending the doubled standard deduction protects $15,000 in value for Southwest Michigan taxpayers.
In line with my Made In America Motors Act, OBBB enacts No Tax on Auto Loan Interest to incentivize buying made-in-America cars and support Michigan auto jobs.
OBBB is Jet Fuel for Our Economy
The OBBB is estimated to unleash $1.5 trillion in small business economic growth. It does this by making the 20% Small Business Deduction permanent and doubles the Section 179 Small Business Immediate Expense Deduction.
Permanent immediate R&D investment amortization, 100% immediate expensing, interest expense deduction, and new 100% expensing for new or expanded factories will supercharge manufacturing wages by $126 billion and spur $284 billion in additional manufacturing GDP.
Furthermore, the bill reduces paperwork for 1099 small businesses, reinstates Opportunity Zones to revitalize investment in communities, protects or creates more than 7 million jobs, and is estimated to boost real wages by up to $7,200 for every American worker. The opportunity zone provision opens the door to help spur investment in portions of Allegan, Berrien, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, Ottawa, and Van Buren Counties.
Border Security Update: Restoring Operational Control of Our Southern Border
The OBBB makes the biggest-ever investment into enhancing and maintaining border security. After President Biden allowed millions of illegal immigrants from across the globe into our nation, these investments are critical to help hire new border patrol agents, enhance technology being used to secure the border, build the wall and additional physical barriers, and fix the massive problem created by President Biden and Kamala Harris’ open border policies.
The most recent data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that encounters at our southern border have fallen dramatically, security at our northern border continues to improve, known gotaways have fallen by more than 90% compared to last year, and last month zero illegal immigrants were released into the United States. This positive progress must become the standard not the exception when it comes to securing our borders and the OBBB makes that a reality.
Investing in the Future of America
The OBBB unleashes American energy dominance to lower your family’s energy costs, support our allies, and grow our economy. The OBBB also strives to make life more affordable and put downward pressure on inflation by including the largest mandatory spending reduction to ever be signed into law. This measure also provides vital certainty for millions of family farms by sparing them the death tax. This will help the next generation of farmers continue to feed Southwest Michigan and the world.
Additionally, the OBBB critically upgrades our nation’s Air Traffic Control and Coast Guard, ends wasteful Green New Deal policies, allows investment into greater school choice, and modernizes our military with a $150B investment into deterrence, the Golden Dome, and servicemembers and their families.
Protecting Medicaid by Eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse
There have been many claims regarding the OBBB and it’s impact on Medicaid. Here is what the legislation does.
The OBBB seeks to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse from both SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid by implementing work requirements for able-bodied individuals without minor dependents.
These commonsense reforms were once enacted in Michigan by then Governor John Engler and resulted in more than 300,000 Michiganders leaving aid rolls and joining private sector payrolls.
The requirement in the OBBB says able-bodied individuals — without children 13 years or younger — must work, receive training, further their education, or volunteer for a total of 80 hours per month (20 hours a week) to maintain their benefits.
These requirements DO NOT APPLY to pregnant mothers, families with children 13 and younger, the elderly, caregivers, and those medically unable to work.
In fact, OBBB protects Medicaid for those who truly need it by taking meaningful steps to root out the causes of the estimated $500 billion to $1 trillion dollars in Medicaid fraud that has taken place over the past decade. It does this by including provisions to address the 1.6 million individuals who are enrolled in Medicaid programs across multiple states as well as provisions to prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving government benefits.
Importantly, the OBBB also includes provisions to expand access to home and community-based services covered by Medicaid.
Without taking this action, the average taxpayer here in Michigan’s 4th District would have faced a massive 25% tax increase, and that’s not all.
Over 70,000 families would have had their per child tax credit cut in half, tax rates for nearly 42,000 small businesses would have soared to 43.4%, and 95% of the more than 452,000 taxpayers in Southwest Michigan would have seen their standard deduction slashed in half.
Thankfully with passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans stopped middle class families and small businesses from being hit with the largest tax increase in history and these negative outcomes have been avoided.
Codifying Executive Orders into Law
Lastly, the OBBB codifies 28 Executive Orders signed by President Trump into law. These range from securing our border and strengthening our national security to unleashing American Energy Production.
Again, I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me, and please do not hesitate to do so in the future. To stay up to date with the latest news on our work in Congress, you may sign up at huizenga.house.gov/forms/emailsignup/ to receive my e-newsletter, the Huizenga Huddle.
Sincerely,
Bill Huizenga
Member of Congress
I don’t remember sending a letter to my senators about the Big Ugly Bill but sometimes I contact my reps through a third party campaign and when I do that I don’t keep a record of it. In any case, I received the following response one of my senators, dated October 7, 2025:
Dear Mr. Arthur,
Thank you for reaching out to my office about the “Big Beautiful Bill.” I apologize for the delayed response to your message. As your new Senator as of January 2025, I appreciate hearing from you.
This 1,000+ page bill significantly rewrites federal tax code and makes large cuts to health care programs. Before I get into the specifics of the bill, I want to be upfront: I voted against this legislation for a number of reasons. Primarily, no matter which way you slice it, I believe this bill is going to make Michiganders pay in every part of their life – their healthcare, cost of living, energy – all to give the wealthiest Americans another tax cut.
On July 1st, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 51-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie. The next day, the House passed the bill by a 218-214 vote, sending it to President Trump’s desk, where he signed it into law on July 4th.
Now, onto the substance. I want to start on healthcare and be clear: President Trump’s bill is projected to result in 17 million Americans losing their health care coverage. And it will affect all Americans. People are at risk of losing their insurance or seeing their costs go up. For those on Medicaid, this bill is truly devastating. But beyond the individuals who benefit from its coverage, Medicaid’s sheer scale makes it critical to the entire healthcare ecosystem – undergirding hospitals, health clinics, home health agencies, mental health systems, and more – all of whom rely on Medicaid to support their operations. For example, Michigan hospitals believe that this bill will cost them more than $6 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years. Community Health Centers in Michigan have predicted that over 40% of their sites across the state will close because of this bill. We are already seeing hospitals across the country consider cuts to services, including labor and delivery, long-term care, and oncology services. This will be particularly devastating for rural Michiganders, especially those in the Upper Peninsula, where providers heavily rely on Medicaid and where patients already travel significant distances to receive care.
In addition, for the half a million Michiganders who get coverage through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, commonly known as Obamacare, the cost of their coverage will go up in 2026 and beyond – for most, by a lot – and it will become harder to sign up for coverage after that. And finally, for those on employer-provided insurance, don’t be surprised when you feel the ripple effects of this bill’s $1 trillion hit to our healthcare system on your own premiums. Michiganders can expect to see these price increases as soon as they begin shopping for next year’s coverage this fall.
Second, on student loans and the cost of education – this bill makes higher education, particularly four-year colleges and graduate degree programs, less accessible for middle-class Americans. It cuts and caps options for federal student loans, which have been a huge factor in helping middle-class people get undergraduate and graduate degrees, forcing them to use the private market or reconsider higher education entirely.
Next, the cuts to SNAP. The bill includes nearly $186 billion in cuts to nutrition, mainly through expanded work requirements and state benefit cost-shifts. The Administration argues that it is not cutting SNAP benefits because the states can just pay more – but that’s not how it works. States do not currently pay for this program – the federal government pays for it. The work requirements alone could result in nearly 125,000 Michiganders losing some or all of their benefits. Please know that I will do everything in my power to defend SNAP from any additional harmful cuts during Farm Bill negotiations and will continue to use my position on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee to strengthen the numerous nutrition assistance programs that serve as a key lifeline for many Michigan families.
The bill also accelerates the phaseout of the clean energy tax credits that have been essential to job creation and energy infrastructure investments in Michigan. Despite the importance of these clean energy investments, the bill takes a step backward in our pursuit of energy dominance. We need an all-of-the-above energy plan—and we need to pursue it now. This law will make it harder for our country to meet its growing demand for energy, making us more reliant on foreign countries, and will increase everybody’s energy costs. As new technologies like artificial intelligence demand more energy, countries like China understand that renewable energy comes online faster and can meet the growing demand. China has installed more wind turbines and solar panels last year than the rest of the world combined—and they are expected to account for almost 60% of all renewable energy capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030. Because of this bill, Michigan is more at-risk for energy shortages. As your Senator, rest assured that I will fight to protect funding that strengthens the U.S.’s energy grid, creates good-paying manufacturing jobs at home, and bolsters our economic competition with China.
Additionally, the bill extends or makes permanent many of the tax provisions we saw during President Trump’s first administration. By far, this bill favors the wealthiest tax brackets – under the “Big Beautiful Bill”, the lower your income, the higher your costs will be. It’s the wealthiest Americans – those who make annual salaries in the millions – who will benefit from these tax cuts more than any other group. Americans making $4 million a year on average will see a $301,000 income gain after filing their 2026 taxes. Meanwhile, a family in Michigan earning $30,000 a year would see an average decrease of $165 after taxes that same year.
This bill also included temporary cuts that should benefit Michiganders, including no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. I support both of those provisions. But both will expire in 2028 and it’s unclear at this time which tipped workers are eligible for the deduction.
Finally, Social Security hasn’t changed and that income is still taxed. Instead, the bill gives a $6,000 deduction for those who are 65+ and make less than $75,000 a year. This provision is also set to expire in 2028. By design, many of the benefits that will help low- and middle-income Americans are set to expire, while those skewed toward the wealthy were made permanent.
Most SNAP, Medicaid, and clean energy cuts won’t go into effect until later this year, and we don’t yet have the nitty-gritty details of how these cuts will be implemented, including how to comply with new rules. Much of this info will come from state agencies, so watch for updates from us in the coming months. As more analysis and details come out, we’re keeping tabs on how this bill affects you and your loved ones, and we will be sure to stay in touch. I recently held a town hall covering these issues – you can watch that at https://sen.gov/NXV9J. If you want a more in-depth analysis of the bill’s implications, you can check out my newsletter at https://sen.gov/MZ499.
We want to hear from you—real stories, from real Michiganders like you, on how this bill is affecting you. These stories are important. Your voice matters. And we’re listening.
Once again, sincere thanks for reaching out. I believe that engaging your elected officials is a critical component of our democracy and allows us to better represent you, so thank you for taking the time to get in touch.
Last thing: if you want to keep up with my work for Michigan in the U.S. Senate, you can visit my website at https://www.slotkin.senate.gov/services/newsletter/ and sign up for my newsletter, which is the single best way to stay in touch. You can also find regular updates on social media by following me on Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky, YouTube, or Instagram. Please do not hesitate to contact me for this or any other matter of concern to you.
Sincerely,
Elissa Slotkin
U.S. Senator for Michigan