By Joseph-Emery Kouaho, Ph.D.

As chants of “USA, USA” rang through the hollowed chambers of our nation’s Capital following the Senate’s passage of the I was instantly transported to a pew in the Riverside Baptist Church in April of 1967, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his disavowing the United States’ increased financial and military involvement in South Vietnam. At a time when social unrest claimed hundreds of lives throughout the nation, and dominated the streets in most major cities, Congress voted to shift from the financial commitments promised through Johnson’s Great Society to finance atrocities in an independent nation thousands of miles away. With that shift in priority, the Black community’s hope of a “Negro Marshall Plan” evaporated like dandelions in an autumn wind. While circumstances differ slightly in the tenor of the United States’ current involvement in foreign military affairs, the decisions that legislators made this past month to divert funds from social programs are eerily akin to those made six decades ago.

OBBBA purports to render government more efficient by extending generous tax breaks to people in higher income brackets, with the notion that their increased savings would trickle down and reinvigorate the economy. One caveat — the legislation will account for these tax cuts by divesting from much needed government assistance programs related to nutrition, healthcare, and student debt relief amongst other cuts which are strategically shielded through the Act.

Here is an abridged rundown of the proposed, and now ratified legislation:

The Bill:

• Expanded work requirements for SNAP, and Medicaid recipients, while simultaneously shifting more of the cost of Medicaid and Medicare provision to states.
  • Specifically, the expanded work provisions require that all able-bodied adults (aged 19-64) who are SNAP and Medicaid-eligible work at to maintain eligibility. Eligible adults must report employment to a reporting agency, and those unable to work can maintain eligibility by performing community service, enrolling in school, or engaging in a work program.
• Slashed $1 trillion in Medicaid funding, which combined with the new work reporting guidelines, could affect nearly 12 million eligible adults and their dependents. This could have increased negative ramifications for adults residing in the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The nearly 1000-page bill has provisions that impact all sectors, with other notable changes occurring in collegegoers’ capacity to access student loans and repayment plans. Anticipated changes to the federal government’s college-borrowing structure are:  

• The elimination of GRAD Plus Loans.
• Stafford Loans capped at $100,000 for graduate students, and $200,000 for professional students.
• The introduction of a new lifetime cap for Parent Plus Loans of $65,000.

Additionally, student loan repayment options will be limited to two standard options, both of which experts say would increase yearly student loan payments by nearly $3000 for the average borrower.

Where the bill taketh away in assistance programs, it giveth — to the tune of billions of dollars — to bolster the federal government’s capacity to restrict the civil and human rights of foreign-born or naturalized U.S. inhabitants. Indeed, the bill allocates funding to increase border security infrastructures in the excess of $45.6 billion to complete Trump’s wall, a further $45 billion earmarked to increase ICE’s defenses, and another $25 billion for a Golden Dome Missile Defense system akin to the fixture floating above Israel. In addition, tax cuts to the wealthiest, and a sharp turn away from upgrading the clean energy infrastructure is expected to lead to increased energy costs for all, with the brunt of it impacting communities who reside in areas impacted by extreme weather patterns.

How will this impact Kindred Futures’ mission of creating wealth solutions for the 2 million Black households in the South with zero to negative net worth? It means that the charge has grown increasingly more difficult, and that potentially more families, business owners, entrepreneurs, who, before this act, were holding on desperately to their lifeboats, will most certainly drown in this titanic flood. Yet, there is another path. In several renditions of  “Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X, invited the Black community to coalesce on a unified vision centered on achieving political, economic, and social gains through a revolution of the mind. He noted,

“We have to change our own minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and harmony that’s necessary to get this problem solved ourselves […]”

Thus, this is our charge then — for all affected parties. We need a revolution of change, values, and character as a nation. This one big, beautiful bill creates one big, beautiful opportunity to do just that — unify. Are you ready to lock arms in unity?