The Budget Bill, The Environment, and MCE

July 3, 2025July 3, 2025 News

By Maxine Gill, MCE Policy Coordinator

On Tuesday, Vice President J.D. Vance stepped in to tie-break a 50-50 vote split on the Senate’s version of the President Trump and Republican legislator-driven budget reconciliation bill. Today, the bill faces a vote in the House. The budget bill has gained national attention for the estimated $3.3 trillion to $4 trillion it would add to national debt against reconciliation convention and the significant cuts the bill will make to Medicaid and SNAP benefits for millions of Americans. 

Budget reconciliation is an expedited policy process that allows Congress to pass significant legislation with the vote of a simple majority, as opposed to the typical 60 votes needed to clear the risk of a filibuster in the Senate. While the reconciliation process was originally intended to “reconcile” the federal budget to ensure critical programs receive funding, it has in recent years been used as a means to bypass the traditional legislative process to pass controversial policy.

Like many nonprofits, this bill will impact our work and priorities at MCE. We seek to break down some key environmental components of the bill below. 

The Environmental Upsides

Starting with some positives, this bill includes a few provisions that will help our environmental priorities, and negotiations have averted several of the most egregious environmentally-harmful provisions once laid out in the policy. 

Positive Provisions

• RECA– The budget reconciliation package includes an expansion to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which would add some St. Louis and St. Charles zipcodes to the list eligible to receive compensation under the act. After years of consistent advocacy by our Policy Specialist Christen Commuso in partnership with community groups, RECA advocate Sen. Josh Hawley delivered on a promise to add an expansion to RECA on legislation that is likely to pass. This would allow St. Louisans who experience qualifying cancers as a result of their exposure to radioactive weapons waste to file a claim and receive compensation for themselves or a deceased loved one. However, this policy win for St. Louis will come at the expense of significant environmental policy losses. Read our Policy Specialist Christen Commuso’s personal statement regarding the budget reconciliation bill’s inclusion of RECA expansion here. 

• Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley successfully advocated for $50 billion in a fund for rural hospitals as one small way to offset some of the significant cuts to medicaid put forth in this legislation. Funding for rural hospitals will help rural Missourians seek needed medical care, including for environmental health harms from industrial activities such as mining in the Lead Belt. This funding does not in any meaningful way make up the difference from Medicaid cuts to Missourians– healthcare cuts will still devastate millions of Americans. 

Averted Harm

• The latest version of the budget reconciliation bill stripped a proposed excise tax on renewable energy– burdensome fees for renewables that would have been reflected in consumer prices. The stated intention of this excise tax was to incentivize domestic production of energy, but it ultimately proved cost prohibitive for the renewable industry to operate without certain foreign-manufactured components. This bill removes renewable energy tax credits to the detriment of the industry and nationwide energy security, but this slashed provision represents one step against inflated prices for green energy.
  
• An unpopular provision has been stripped from the bill that would have put a minimum of hundreds of thousands and up to 3.3 million acres of public land up for sale in the Western U.S. This proposal by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) received bipartisan backlash from the Members of Congress representing Western States, resulting in Sen. Lee pulling the provision. Public advocacy also helped remove a provision that would have federalized eminent domain authority for the construction of CO₂  pipelines. 

The Environmental Downsides

Sustainable Agriculture and the Farm Bill

This bill puts the future of a federal Farm Bill in peril by cutting SNAP while including incentives for a few commodity farms, leaving critical programs to help all farmers behind. This move effectively eliminates the possibility of a  comprehensive agricultural package succeeding in the future. 

The Farm Bill is a legislative package of incentives for agriculture that was first enacted in the 1930s, and is typically modified and renewed every five years. About 81% of Farm Bill funds go towards the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This bill proposes a nearly $300 billion cut to SNAP funding, which in addition to devastating millions of low-income Americans, would likely tear apart the bipartisan coalition of legislators the Farm Bill has relied on for the past eight decades. A recent analysis from Columbia University reveals that each $1 cut from SNAP funding will cost society approximately $14 in future financial burden. 

MCE is a member organization in NSAC, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition that has advocated for a diversity of sustainable and economically beneficial provisions in the Farm Bill since 1988. Groups like MCE and NSAC rely on the necessity of the Farm Bill to push for critical programs that help bolster agriculture programs that uplift vulnerable populations and help stabilize our food systems and climate. Without the Farm Bill as a vehicle, the challenge of passing legislation to help sustain small farming operations, bolster local food supply chains, and incentivize sustainable agriculture practices on a large scale increases exponentially. If the current version of the reconciliation bill passes, we will likely see many of our most successful agriculture programs eliminated entirely. 

The Farm Bill has not been renewed since 2018, and this budget bill may eliminate a chance at a future rendition. By slashing SNAP and including a mere few tax incentives only for the largest commodity farms, this bill renders a legislative package including incentive programs for all farmers unlikely to pass on its own. Programs at risk include things like farm loan programs and capital access for all farmers, the Compost and Food Waste Reduction Program, and Regional Food System Partnership programs. It will also revoke programs targeted at helping rural farmers, such as the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, Rural Cooperative Development Grants, Rural Business Development Grants, Business and Industry Loan Programs, and the Rural Energy for America Program. Agricultural research programs, organic farming assistance programs, and programs that help vulnerable populations connect to and build up local food supply chains will all be cut. Read more at NSAC’s press release here. 

Slashing SNAP would also harm small local farmers by cutting programs such as double up food bucks, which allowed SNAP recipients to double the value of their benefits when spent on fresh local foods from farmers markets, putting that money in the pockets of small farmers.

Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency 

This budget proposal would spell an early termination for many renewable energy tax credits created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Among the slashed tax incentives are tax credits for clean energy projects, new and used electric vehicles, energy efficiency programs, home installment of EV charging infrastructure, and home installment of insulation and energy efficient heating and cooling systems. It would also end the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which assists nonprofits financing projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution in communities. 

IRA tax incentives were initially slated to continue through at least 2032, and according to a report commissioned by The Nature Conservancy were estimated to add $32.5 billion in economic value add, $16 billion in wages, and over 285,000 jobs each year. Estimates from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions show that these cuts will result in a loss of 1.6 million jobs and $290 billion in GDP, a 4% increase in energy prices, and an 8% increase in greenhouse gas emissions. 

Significantly, cutting energy saving programs would increase the cost of keeping for both utility companies and consumers. This is a significant blow to our organization after our battle against utility price increases from statewide legislation like SB 4, and rate increases by our regional monopoly utilities. 

Weakened protections against fossil fuel, mining, and logging companies 

One provision in the legislation limits judicial review for major fossil fuel, mining, and logging projects. This significantly weakens the ability of state and tribal governments to fight these industries in court. Fossil fuel, mining, logging and other environmentally extractive businesses could now buy fast-tracked environmental reviews through limiting the power of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This crucially fetters the legal process for environmental oversight. 

Immigration 

This reconciliation bill funnels money that could be used for any number of critical programs at risk into the already well-funded immigration enforcement. Immigrant communities, especially immigrants from Latin America, are the foundation of our nationwide agricultural industry. They also face the brunt of the impacts from agricultural pollution including water contamination, air pollution, and exposure to occupational hazards within CAFOs. 

Failing to renew a Farm Bill while funding inhumane, unjust, and frequently unconstitutional mass deportations puts our food supply and climate at risk, while further endangering the communities that feed our nation. 

Healthcare

The burden of health impacts from polluting industries and environmental hazards falls disproportionately on communities of color and low income communities across the country. Historic redlining and place-based manifestations of systemic racism such as the disproportionate placement of environmental hazards in Black and Brown communities means that communities of color and low income communities face higher rates of environmentally caused health issues. Due to the same systemic issues, they also face lower rates of health insurance coverage, a disparity that is likely to widen with medicaid cuts. This bill cuts $930 billion from Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordance Care Act over a decade. In Missouri, 21% of the population, or about 1.25 million individuals are enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which are at risk under this bill. Removing this health insurance coverage will negatively impact Missourians’ ability to cope with the health issues caused by environmental contamination. 

In Conclusion

While some environmental harms were averted due to negotiations in congress, and some provisions of this bill represent a positive development for our environmental priorities, should this bill pass, we will face an uphill battle to recover from its associated environmental and human health harms. Missouri Coalition for the Environment has been advocating for environmental reform since before the creation of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and we will stay true to our mission no matter what political landscape lies ahead. Even in the face of significant potential setbacks, we hope you will support and join us in continuing our fight for a more sustainable and equitable environmental future with tenacity.