RELEASE: Gottheimer Slams Devastating Cuts to Jersey Seniors, Children, and Families in Extreme-Right Budget Bill

Above: Gottheimer rallies with North Jersey leaders against the extreme-right budget bill.

PARAMUS, NJ — Today, May 23, 2025, U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) slammed the far-right extremist budget bill that passed the House of Representatives yesterday by one vote, standing outside a local hospital that serves patients who rely on Medicaid. Gottheimer was joined by North Jersey reproductive rights, health care, and nutrition advocates.

The far-right budget guts essential programs that Jersey families rely on — slashing Medicaid, stripping affordable health care from families, cutting SNAP and school meals, and defunding Planned Parenthood. These reckless cuts would devastate Jersey’s most vulnerable populations, harming seniors, children, and families in need. The bill also fails to fully restore the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, sticking it to middle-class Jersey families. 

As the bill heads to the Senate, Gottheimer is sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune to sound the alarm on the devastating damage that these cuts will inflict on Jersey families, and urging him to protect these critical programs that Jersey families rely on.

Video of Gottheimer’s announcement can be found here.

“There’s a reason Republicans fought among themselves for months over their extreme-right budget bill: they know it’s a disaster for our families, children, and seniors. That’s why it passed the House by one vote. This budget makes the largest cuts to health care and nutritional assistance in our nation’s history. As far-right extremists continue to fight in the Senate about how deep to gut our most critical programs, one thing is clear: Jersey children, seniors, and families will pay the price,” said Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5). “Rather than making life affordable, the extreme right is cutting critical lifelines that Jersey families rely on. We need to defend our Jersey Values, lower costs, and cut taxes, not create more chaos and abandon vulnerable seniors and hungry children.”

Devastating Effects of the Extreme-Right Budget Bill:

• The bill slashes Medicaid — with nearly 14 million people, including 1.7 million in Jersey, set to lose their health care, and millions more families forced to pay higher insurance premiums.
  • In Northern New Jersey, nearly 90,000 people, including 30,000 children and 13,000 seniors, would lose their health care through NJ Family Care. 40% are adults with disabilities, and an estimated 60% who live in nursing homes rely on Medicaid for affordable healthcare. 
• The bill makes the largest cut to nutritional assistance in history.
  • 820,000 people in Jersey count on SNAP for healthy, nutritious meals.

• The bill slashes school meal programs, putting 93,000 children in Jersey at risk of losing access to free school lunch.
  • According to Feeding America, more than 44 million people in the U.S. face hunger, including 1 in 5 children. 
  • In New Jersey, nearly 10% of the state’s population is food insecure.
• The bill defunds Planned Parenthood, threatening 23 Planned Parenthood health centers in Jersey that more than 120,000 people depend on each year for access to cancer screenings, reproductive care, and more.
  • The bill also effectively bans Affordable Care Act health care plans from covering reproductive health services.
• The bill fails to restore the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, which President Trump promised to do.
  • Extremists in the House blocked an amendment that Gottheimer helped introduce that would have eliminated the cap and fully restored the SALT deduction.
  • Since 2017, Gottheimer has helped pass four bills out of the House to restore SALT.
• On top of this, the legislation adds nearly $4 trillion to our national debt, sticking our children and future generations with an enormous bill. 

Gottheimer was joined by Assemblywoman Lisa Swain, President and CEO of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center Deb Visconi, Joel Berg of Hunger Free America, and Kaitlyn Wojtowicz of Planned Parenthood.

Below: Gottheimer rallies with North Jersey leaders against the extreme-right budget bill.

Gottheimer’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

I want to thank Bergen County Executive James Tedesco for his leadership and Deb Visconi for hosting us as we rally the troops to defend Jersey families.

Before I begin, I just want to take a moment to speak on the terrorist attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night. Like all of you, I am heartbroken by the senseless antisemitic attack on the young couple who were planning to get engaged, when they were gunned down in cold blood — all because of their faith. We must forcefully combat violence motivated by hate of any kind, and I will never stop fighting to keep our Jewish community, and all of our families, safe.

Some things are just hard to understand. We look through a glass darkly, as Scripture says. I also don’t understand how my friends across the aisle could jam through Congress a piece of legislation that will knowingly devastate our families, our children, and our seniors — taking away health care, including women’s health care, forcing children to go hungry, kicking seniors out of nursing homes, and sticking it to our communities here in Jersey. There is nothing big and beautiful about that. There’s nothing God-fearing about that. 

Oh, and it does all of this while adding $4 trillion to the national debt, and it has already, in anticipation, forced a downgrade of our credit rating as a country from Moody’s. There are so many things wrong with this bill — so many daggers aimed at Jersey. Today, I’ll just focus on a few of them.

Countless seniors in our community rely on federal investments to access health care here at Bergen New Bridge and facilities just like this one. More than 20 percent of Bergen County residents are 60 and over — the largest population in the entire state.

Yet, this week, we saw extremists in Congress lead, and jam through, a reckless budget bill through the House that slashes Medicaid, with nearly 14 million seniors and children, including 1.7 million here in Jersey, set to lose their health care, and millions more families forced to pay higher insurance premiums.

Here in Northern New Jersey, nearly 90,000 people, including 30,000 children and 13,000 seniors, get their health care through programs like NJ Family Care, which would take a serious hit if this bill passes through the Senate and becomes law.  

Seniors across New Jersey also rely on Medicaid for dental and hospice services, while many more — including those with disabilities — rely on this assistance to get by each day. Forty percent are adults with disabilities, and an estimated sixty percent live in nursing homes.  These extremist attacks on health care don’t stop there.

We know that so many children and families in our state rely on school breakfast and lunch and SNAP to eat every day.

Yet, this budget also makes the largest cut to nutritional assistance in our nation’s history. 820,000 people in Jersey count on SNAP for healthy, nutritious meals. By gutting SNAP assistance, extremists are taking food out of the mouths of hungry children and families and sticking our states with the bill to fix it.

To make things even worse, this bill also slashes school meal programs, putting 93,000 children in Jersey at risk of losing access to free school lunch. These are often the only times of day many students get to eat, especially when it comes to getting fresh fruit and vegetables, so they grow up strong and healthy. According to Feeding America, more than forty-four million people in the U.S. face hunger, including one in five children. Here in Jersey, nearly ten percent of our state’s population is food insecure.

This reckless bill also defunds Planned Parenthood, including twenty-three Planned Parenthood health centers in Jersey that more than 120,000 people each year depend on for access to cancer screenings, reproductive care, and more.

And it goes even further than that. As you all know, here in Jersey, we do not stand between a woman and her doctor, or her faith, when making personal, private health care choices. But this far-right bill effectively bans Affordable Care Act health care plans from covering reproductive health services.

Now, onto some of the economic impacts. First off, the bill defunds key investments in alternative energy, including solar projects that we need to grow our energy supply in Jersey — not to mention to help fight climate change. The bill defunds the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits I helped get signed into law, which will cost 292,000 manufacturing jobs by 2028 and close 287 factories. It ends incentives for energy efficiency upgrades to people’s homes. It will gut subsidies for battery manufacturing, incentives for purchases of electric vehicles by individuals and businesses, and money for charging stations that we passed during the Biden Administration. 

And, it increases taxes on hybrids and electric vehicles — imposing a new annual fee of a hundred dollars if you have a hybrid and 250 dollars on owners of electric cars and trucks. These new taxes are also tied to inflation, so they increase each year too.

We know that New Jersey ranks fourth highest in cost of living in the nation, and it’s causing people to leave our state. Not because they ever want to leave, but because they just can’t afford to stay.

For more than a century, the full State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction provided much-needed tax relief for middle-class families — allowing you to deduct what you paid in state income and local property taxes before you pay your federal taxes — helping Jersey families avoid double taxation. That all changed in 2017, when the Red Moocher States jammed the Tax Hike Bill through Congress and put a cap on SALT. 

Instead of letting the 2017 provision expire and giving Jersey the full SALT deduction back, as an amendment I introduced to this awful bill would have done — it was blocked, as the Republicans went in the other direction. If we get anything, SALT will remain capped and will continue to stick it to Jersey.

Since 2017, I’ve already helped pass four bills out of the House to restore SALT — just to watch the Red Moocher States kill it in the Senate every time. That means higher taxes for Jersey middle-class families — cops, teachers, and firefighters. 

During his campaign, President Trump had promised to reverse course on what he did to states like ours in 2017, and would restore the SALT deduction. Instead, the extreme bill passed yesterday includes a half-measure on SALT. And, Senate Majority Leader Thune has already said that even that goes too far.  

There’s a reason Republicans fought among themselves for months over their extreme-right budget bill: they know it’s a disaster for our families, children, and seniors. That’s why it passed the House by one vote. Yes, one. 

As far-right extremists continue to fight in the Senate about how deep to gut our most critical programs, one thing is clear: Jersey children, seniors, and families will pay the price.

So, as the Senate begins to consider this bill, I am writing to Senate Majority Leader John Thune to sound the alarm on the devastating damage that these cuts inflict on Jersey families and urging him to — instead — protect these critical programs. As I said earlier, we know how many seniors and families will be impacted here in our state, including here in my District, by this reckless bill. If my colleagues in the Senate are smart, they will listen.

These are all issues that I, along with those standing here, have been working on together for years.

I helped get legislation signed into law to increase funding for SNAP, and I introduced the Expanding Access to School Meals Act to allow any child who qualifies for reduced meals to receive them at no cost. New Jersey has already done this, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be a national priority. My legislation also expands the poverty threshold for free school lunch from 130 percent to 224 percent of the federal poverty level — which Jersey already does.

And I’m part of a legal fight that’s before the Supreme Court, making it clear that Congress established the right of Medicaid beneficiaries to receive comprehensive, essential health care from any provider of their choice. 

The bottom line is: Rather than making life affordable, the extreme right is cutting critical lifelines that Jersey families rely on. We need to defend our Jersey Values, lower costs and cut taxes, not create more chaos and abandon vulnerable seniors and hungry children. 

If we do that, here in the greatest country in the world, I know that our best days will always be ahead of us. Thank you. God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

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