What can we say about President Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed through the House last week? It is one big, ugly assault on our country – and it should light a fire under all of us to take action.
Because this fight is far from over. The Senate is already greeting the Big Ugly with skepticism about the 1,000 pages of moves to slash and burn our entire social contract. Senators need to hear from us.
What’s in the bill: A huge step backward for clean energy, and our social contract
The Big Ugly boils down to this: Punish the poor, reward the rich, and threaten our future. It gives away the store to corporate polluters and billionaires and rips away support for working families, low-wage workers, climate protections, and clean energy solutions.
As an organization dedicated to building a clean energy future, we are focused in particular on the bill’s myriad provisions that will make our world dirtier and more dangerous.
Lukas Shankar-Ross, deputy director of climate and energy justice at Friends of the Earth U.S. puts it plainly: “This bill is a dream come true for fossil fuel oligarchs.”
- It decimates support for clean energy solutions, undoing all the progress we gained through the Inflation Reduction Act. Doubling down on the commitment to fossil fuels will cost us all dearly: energy costs will rise, good jobs will disappear, emissions will poison our communities, and our treasured lands, forests, and waters will be plundered.
It will end tax credits for various projects from wind farms to battery factories to electric vehicles, imperil $522 billion in announced but pending investments in clean energy, reduce sales of electric vehicles by roughly 40%, and end the battery manufacturing boom.
- It provides instant tax giveaways to pipeline companies, gas exporters, and oil refiners.
- It slashes fines for discharging methane gas into the atmosphere.
- It allows fossil fuel companies to pay less for drilling for oil and gas on public lands, and it opens new tax loopholes and subsidies for oil and gas pipeline companies.
The damage it will do is massive. Researchers at Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Toolkit offer some measure of the extent. It will:
- Increase greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 0.5 billion metric tons per year in 2030.
- Raise household and business energy expenditures by $25 billion in 2030.
- Increase average energy costs by roughly $100 to $160 per household each year in 2030.
Moreover, nearly everything in this bill imperils deeply held Jewish values. A few of the lowlights: It imperils countless working families by slashing funding for Medicaid (leaving millions without healthcare) and SNAP (aka food stamps); and it penalizes people seeking asylum and safety by beefing up border security, building new jails for immigrants, and imposing steep new fees on people applying for asylum and work authorization.
We were on a holy path; we must defend the progress we fought so hard for
After we won passage of the Inflation Reduction Act – the most significant piece of climate legislation in our history – we started down the road away from fossil fuels and toward a clean energy future. It is the only path that makes sense. Solar and wind power are clean, efficient, and affordable. They are the basis of an economy that can thrive and sustain life.
All that progress is now in danger of being obliterated. Committing to fossil fuels is a sure path to destruction and devastation.
We have time to act — along with spirit and moral might
There are distinct signs that Senators – even (especially?) those from red states – have grave doubts about this bill. The truth is that clean energy investments are revitalizing local economies by providing good jobs, reducing energy bills, and providing the basis for a thriving future.
In the weeks ahead, we’ll be mobilizing to ensure that the Jewish American community makes its voice, its values, and its outrage heard loud and clear. We must not lose our momentum and our progress on the path to a just and livable future.
People across the country are coming together to stop this bill and in the weeks ahead Members of Congress will be home for recess. It’s time they hear from you!
- Send a message to your Senator right now.
- Tap into our campaign action toolkit for information on how to lobby your Member of Congress to stop this bill.
- Reach out to our organizing team for support at circles@dayenu.org.
- Join us at in-district meetings (online and in person), or at town halls and rallies.
How the bill will supercharge all that’s wrong
It’s critical to note that this bill exacerbates inequality in the U.S. – especially on lines of income, race, and gender – in direct and indirect ways. Immediately, people will lose access to healthcare, to healthy food, to education, at the same time that corporations and billionaires will get richer. The bottom line? The top 0.1% of earners gain $390,000 a year on average, while Americans making less than $17,000 lose on average about $1,000.
Over the long run, all the regressive climate actions will impose the most harm worst and first on frontline communities – largely Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income. These communities are most exposed to pollution from fossil fuel projects and to extreme weather events, and have the fewest resources to respond.
In short, this Big Ugly bill will accelerate the race to a world that is hotter, dirtier, more dangerous, and more divided than ever before.
We need to have hizuk, strength, in this moment – and so do our elected leaders
The rabbis of the Talmud introduce the Jewish principle of “ma’alin ba-kodesh v’ayn moridin”: once we set out upon a holy path, we rise, we do not descend.
More than 50 years ago the great Martin Luther King Jr. called out the urgency for action in the face of tyranny and oppression. We are again at a critical moment for our collective future.
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there “is” such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”