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As Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” makes its way to President Donald Trump’s desk, Massachusetts officials condemned it as cruel and said it would hike costs for the state.
The bill — which includes expansive tax cuts, funding for deportation programs, and a boost in defense spending — is expected to add $3 trillion to the national debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
An earlier version of the legislation narrowly passed the House in May before moving to the Senate, where it passed with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday. The House voted Thursday to approve an amended version of the bill.
The bill will also implement an increased endowment tax and cut back on social welfare programs to offset new spending.
One of the most controversial cuts in the bill is to Medicaid — which would slash $1.75 billion from the state health care system and scale back healthcare coverage for hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents.
The cuts have drawn widespread criticism from Massachusetts’ overwhelmingly Democratic state government and federal delegation. Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren (D-Mass.) condemned Republicans in a statement for “doubling down on hurting middle-class families in order to fund tax handouts for billionaires and giant corporations.”
Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 also slammed the bill, saying that Republicans in support of the bill have “put their blind loyalty to Donald Trump over their constituents.”
“They were elected to lower costs and strengthen our economy — but this bill does the opposite,” Healey said.
The state will likely attempt to offset these cuts, adding a financial burden to its own budget — a hit that will be most visible in areas where state funding is already constrained, and in the pockets of Massachusetts taxpayers.
“That means we would need to raise state taxes, reduce funding for other state programs, or both,” wrote Harvard Kennedy School professor Linda J. Bilmes. “It is certainly possible that would affect state aid to education (including schools, student aid, etc).”
“All in all, the BBB would shift costs for many programs from the federal government to states, and will likely be detrimental to some of the poorest and sickest residents,” wrote Bilmes.
Massachusetts State Rep. Marjorie C. Decker wrote in a statement to The Crimson that the bill “will cause significant strain on our health care system,” adding that several hospitals and health centers are already struggling and the cut would only do more damage.
“The largest transfer of wealth in our history will be at the expense of people getting sicker, going hungry, and it’s not an exaggeration to say dying,” Decker wrote. “Not only is this bill cruel, but it is fiscally irresponsible, adding to our deficit and long-term costs that will arise due to less health care access and insurance coverage.”
Another cut that’s raising questions for officials is the rollback of food assistance programs like SNAP — a move that Healey wrote will “force Massachusetts families to go hungry.”
Healey’s statement also emphasized that more than one million Massachusetts residents use SNAP benefits. Annual federal spending on SNAP in Massachusetts added up to more than $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2024. The bill would put Massachusetts on the hook for 5 to 15 percent of the costs, and it would impose work requirements that could sharply limit households’ receipt of SNAP benefits.
More than half of the 1.1 million Massachusetts SNAP recipients are families with children, according to estimates by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that researches social policy.
Like Medicaid, a large program like SNAP is difficult to fund at the state level.
“States do not have the resources to make up for these federal cuts,” Healey wrote, calculating that the cuts could cost Massachusetts more than $700 million annually. “We need Congressional Republicans to do the right thing and fund the SNAP program.”
Rural hospitals could also see a $87 billion drop in revenue over 10 years nationwide, the Urban Institute estimated. Sen. Ed J. Markey (D-Mass.) wrote on X that the cuts were “shameful” and slammed the bill as “a catastrophic assault on health care, food, and climate.”
“No billionaire tax break or Trump pat on the back is worth the risk to people’s lives and livelihoods,” Markey wrote in another post.
In anticipation of severe slashes in federal funding from the Trump administration, the state has already taken provisions to provide itself a safety cushion. The state cut its fiscal year 2026 budget by $1 billion, in anticipation of cuts like those proposed in the bill.
“The overall budget is around $61 billion, so a $1 billion cut — I would say that is sort of an anticipatory cut on our end,” Massachusetts State Representative Mike L. Connolly said in an interview.
“Budget negotiators on Beacon Hill had to make this very difficult decision to want to trim the state budget in order to just begin to prepare for what looks like could be catastrophic cuts,” he added.
The state now has nearly $10 billion in a “rainy day fund” and other reserves, which Connolly said are at “unprecedented levels.”
Decker wrote that she was “proud of the investments we recently made” in anticipation of the cuts, but “it will continue to be a challenge.”
“We will not be able to replace these losses dollar for dollar,” Decker wrote.
Even with money allocated as a cushion in case of sweeping funding cuts, the scale of the bill may be too large to properly prepare for.
“The scale of cuts on the federal level is so deep that if everything that’s being proposed with this so-called Big Beautiful Bill, I would call it the Big Ugly Bill,” Connolly said. “If everything that’s being proposed ultimately becomes federal policy, it’ll create an existential crisis.”
—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at megan.blonigen@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.
—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at shawn.boehmer@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.
