Testimony on HB1 before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee

On Saturday, July 26, Catalyst California President and CEO John Kim testified in a field hearing of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee about the projected damage that HB1, the Billionaires' Budget Bill, will do to California and the rest of the country. He was the lone witness allowed to the Democrats. This is his testimony:

Thank you, Chair, Vice Chair, and members of this Committee, for the opportunity to speak with you today. 

My name is John Kim, and I serve as President and CEO of Catalyst California. As a research and policy organization, we’ve worked for 25 years to transform our public systems so that all Californians have the opportunity to thrive. 

I’m here to make clear what HR1 means for families and communities in the Golden State and across the country.  

I know you expect me to rattle off facts and figures to demonstrate the atrocious and destructive impact of the bill on Americans. Don’t worry, I’ll get there.  

But this bill isn’t just a spreadsheet with numbers, the same way any budget is not just about income and expense. It is a statement of values, of what we care about and what we don’t. 

Almost 250 years ago, revolutionary leaders faced down the tyranny, wealth, and concentrated power of a king. They wrote a Constitution where they described a government for the people and by the people, that would protect us from moneyed interests, tame the baser impulses of greed, and promote the welfare of all people.  

This bill does not describe THAT America, where our government protects people against the tyranny and megalomania of billionaires, where my fate is intertwined with your fate—so I damn well better make sure your fate looks good.  

Thomas Jefferson, one of those revolutionaries, was worried about everything this bill represents when, in 1816, he wrote to his compatriot George Logan, “I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.” 

When I look at HR1, I see our democracy crushed by the aristocracy of our monied corporations. A redistribution of wealth and opportunity away from everyday Americans to the ultra-wealthy is an attack on democracy, our democracy by and for the people.   

This bill raids our futures, the futures of our children, and the very future of our country to enrich a very few.  

Now, to the numbers, numbers so big they will make your ears pop.  

Cruel Cuts: Medicaid, SNAP, and the Engineered Wave of Poverty 

According to the CBO, HR1 will add $3.4 trillion to the deficit by tremendous handouts to the wealthiest among us, and corporations. These handouts are paid for by malnutrition, illness, and suffering of the poorest among us through cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.  

More than 4 million Californians, many of them seniors, children, and low-income workers, will lose health coverage through Medicaid and the failure to extend ACA premium subsidies. 

These cuts will shutter hospitals and clinics in urban and rural areas, ripping away the last sources of care from communities already on life support. When you close the only clinic in town, you decide that someone’s child won’t get asthma treatment, that someone’s parents will die waiting. This is the cost of handouts for the wealthy and corporations.  

Over 3 million households in California will lose nutrition support through SNAP. That means kids go to school hungry. Our elders who worked hard so we may have a better life and need support in their old forced to skip meals. People with disabilities facing empty fridges. This is the cost of handouts for the wealthy and corporations. 

A Fiscal Crisis Made in Washington 

Here are some more numbers for you. 

• California stands to lose between $112 billion and $187 billion in federal health care funding over the next decade.
• SNAP cuts mean the state would need to backfill $2.5 billion annually just to maintain current levels of food assistance.
• Here in LA County, local leaders project a $1 billion drain from our public health system. 

This isn’t some distant possibility. It’s already happening. Our Department of Health Services has announced a hiring freeze. Clinics are weighing closures. Care workers are being laid off. 

What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the very systems that hold our communities together. 

A Crisis Manufactured in the Streets of Los Angeles 

I also want to talk about what’s happened right here in Southern California—because it’s not theoretical, and it’s not over. 

Earlier this year, while we were still recovering from devastating wildfires, our communities were hit with something even more terrifying: an unannounced, militarized federal operation targeting our neighbors, friends, church members, coworkers, and employees. 

Masked, unidentified agents roamed our neighborhoods, snatching people off the streets. 

We are told that this is about making our communities and our country safer—lies that are easy to see as such. Agents of the federal government terrorized our community. We didn’t feel safe, or free, we felt fear and control 

Our city shut down – business shuttered, street vendor carts abandoned or taken over by children, grocery stores empty. You want to know what a terrorized city looks like? It looks empty, dead of civic life.  

Behind every closed storefront were stories we may never hear: 

• Children kept indoors, missing summer programs or school
• Parents too afraid to go to work, losing income for food and rent
• People skipping doctor appointments, avoiding public space
• Entire neighborhoods going underground

Neighbors organized food drives, but many families were too scared to open their doors and accept a bag of groceries. 

This is the human cost of policies rooted in fear, and HR1 is built to scale fear nationally with close to $75 billion for terror-style raids, detention, and deportations—something the majority of Americans don’t want to see. 

What we saw in L.A. will become the norm in cities and towns across America. 

This Is Bigger Than California 

I’ve given you a California lens, but this story will repeat itself nationwide. Yes, some will point to the small business tax provisions or benefits for tipped workers, but let’s be honest: those are crumbs. Crumbs for a small few while all of our lunch is stolen. 

Let’s End with Truth 

I hope we agree on what this country is supposed to be.  

Our founders faced down a monarchy to build a democracy where power came from the people and served the people. They did not want us to crown new kings in corporate boardrooms or the halls of government.  

I am not the enemy. 

The people of Los Angeles are not the enemy. 

The farmworker in the Central Valley, the elder in Fresno, the hungry child in San Diego—they are not your enemy. 

We are that hope for democracy.

The threat is not each other. 

The threat is the lie that we are strangers to one another. That your future isn’t bound up in mine. The threat to our future are those people who tell us the lie that our differences make us enemies, while they plunder our lives.  

I have to believe we are better than what this bill represents. 

But if we choose fear over solidarity, greed over justice, and division over shared fate—then we lose more than a policy debate. We lose the promise of this country. 

Thank you.