With a narrow margin, the U.S. Senate sent its version of the budget reconciliation bill to the U.S. House, which included steep cuts to Medicaid and significant rollbacks on environmental protections.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 07/02/2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Edder Díaz Martínez, Communications Manager, 602-832-6039, [email protected]
WASHINGTON — Yesterday, Tuesday, July 1st, the United States Senate voted to approve the federal budget bill with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President J.D. Vance. The bill will return to the U.S. House of Representatives for a potential full floor vote this week. As it stands, the bill contains deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, potentially leaving millions of Americans without health coverage and food security, and a significant increase in funding for Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE) budgets to continue their inhumane apprehensions of people nationwide.
Despite these major setbacks, some environmental wins were due to community advocacy, including removing Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment, which would have sold off federal public lands, and the exclusion of AI regulation prohibitions, which could have had a devastating impact on the environment.
Right now, the bill is being debated on the House floor, with moderate and conservative hardliners gambling with the lives of everyday Americans. From the countless studies released over the years, we know that Latino communities will be among the worst-impacted if this bill is passed and signed into law.
Following the passage of this bill in the U.S. Senate, GreenLatinos Program Directors released the following statements:
“The Big Ugly Bill passed by the Senate today is a direct attack on our communities and our climate. By fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, delaying the methane polluter fee, undermining NEPA, and stripping away vital environmental reviews, the Senate has handed polluters a blank check—at the expense of Latino families across the country who already breathe the dirtiest air and work in the most climate-exposed jobs. This bill puts profit over people, and it will worsen the heat, pollution, and injustice we are already fighting to survive. GreenLatinos condemns this legislation and will continue to fight for a future where our health and our environment are protected, not sacrificed.” — Irene Burga, Climate Justice and Clean Air Director, GreenLatinos
“The passage of this bill demonstrates that the Senate is prioritizing corporate greed, rather than the needs of communities throughout the country. Communities across the country are already being burdened with contaminated water resources and worsening air quality. By rolling back environmental regulations on polluters, this will only exacerbate the inequity in these issues. The science about our reliance on fossil fuels is abundantly clear, and yet the Senate has played a critical role in ignoring the science and continuing to sacrifice the wellbeing of our communities, the environment, and our future.” — Dr. Val Z. Schüll, Water Equity and Ocean Program Director, GreenLatinos
"By the slimmest of margins, the United States Senate has voted to condemn millions of everyday Americans striving for better lives. While some of the most damaging amendments - like the public land sell off provisions and artificial intelligence regulation moratorium - were ultimately defeated through bipartisan efforts, the bill itself remains a gold-plated disaster for the Latino community. Without swift rejection from the House of Representatives, this proposal will lower quality of life nationwide—eliminating healthcare eligibility, increasing pollution in our schools and neighborhoods, desecrating cultural sites and public lands, and driving up utility costs. At the same time, it paves the way for the largest upward concentration of wealth and unprecedented militarization of our borders in U.S. history. Now more than ever, our politics must put families, communities, and the environment before greed and short-sighted politicking.” -– Pedro Hernández, California State Program Manager, GreenLatinos
“Those who opposed this bill fought for our lives, our homes, and affordable cost of living for all Americans. They defended our sacred relatives—from the forests and tundra of Alaska and indigenous communities relying on them, to the hundreds of threatened and endangered species nationwide vital to our prosperity—because they have a vision for true national prosperity that will prevail. Despite the Senate passage of the cruelest bill in history with outsize impacts on immigrants and families, we celebrate important victories in the final bill. Public lands remain in public hands, Americans can shape how AI data centers fit into our communities, and federal funding will support advanced solar and wind energy facilities online within a year. This debate is not over. Members of the House must act like their life depends on throwing out this bill—because it does.” –– Olivia Juarez, Public Land Program Director, GreenLatinos
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About GreenLatinos
GreenLatinos (NOTE: GreenLatinos is ONE WORD) is an active comunidad of Latino/a/e leaders, emboldened by the power and wisdom of our culture, united to demand equity and dismantle racism, resourced to win our environmental, conservation, and climate justice battles, and driven to secure our political, economic, cultural, and environmental liberation.
