Today the People’s Organization For Progress (POP) announced its opposition to budget legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Senate and called on upon Congress to “kill the bill.”

The following statement was released by Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People’s Organization For Progress:

H.R. 1, the budget reconciliation bill, is called the “big, beautiful bill.” In reality, it is one of the most horrible pieces of legislation to come before Congress in years. It is said that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. To billionaires and millionaires this is probably a beautiful piece of legislation since it will increase their wealth. However, to the rest of us it is hideous, monstrous, and grotesque.

This bill will cut back many social programs that the majority of Americans depend on. These cuts will cause pain, suffering and death. It is a bill that aims to hurt most of us, working people, the poor, and the struggling middle class. Should it become law it will hurt the most vulnerable in our society, our children, the elderly, those who are sick, destitute, and hungry.

The bill is clearly an instrument of class warfare. It will bring about one of the greatest upward transfers of wealth, from the vast majority of society to richest among us, in recent times. This in turn will increase inequality in a country that is already vastly unequal. And that will increase social tensions and possibly lead to upheavals greater than those we have already seen in recent decades.

This is a bill that will literally hurt the majority of society in order to reward a very small and very wealthy minority. It will cutback social programs for the many while providing trillions of dollars of tax breaks for the few. There is another aspect of this bill that has not been given enough public attention.

That is the increase in the amount of funds being spent on the military, police, surveillance, and incarceration. We are spending more for war abroad, police repression and mass incarceration at home. Meanwhile our government is spending less for housing, healthcare, education, food assistance, job creation and other domestic needs.

In addition, cutbacks in foreign food aid to poor and underdeveloped countries is causing starvation and death among hundreds of thousands of people. A country that spends more for war, policing, and incarceration than for human needs is morally bankrupt. The People’s Organization Progress (POP) calls upon the members of Congress to stand up for the interests of the people and not those of the billionaire class.

We call upon members of both the House and Senate to vote “no” and kill Trump’s budget bill. We also call upon people everywhere to immediately flood the offices of their congressional representatives with phone calls, emails and letters telling them in the strongest possible terms to vote against this budget bill. Thank you.