This letter will be delivered to Massachusetts Republican Party Headquarters in Boston on Friday July 11th by the Just Budget and Tax Coalition after a rally outside the office.
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Ms. Amy Carnavale, Chair
Massachusetts Republican Party July 11, 2025
85 Merrimac Street BY HAND
Boston, MA
Dear Ms. Carnavale:
On behalf of Massachusetts residents, we write to urge the Massachusetts Republican Party to repudiate publicly the reckless actions of your party’s leaders in Washington.
Many of us here today are low income seniors, families and individuals who rely on HUD rental subsidies to keep a roof over our heads. We are alarmed by the Trump Administration’s extremist proposal, in its FY 2026 Appropriations request, to terminate all Project and Tenant Based Section 8 and Public Housing rental subsidy programs, to be replaced with a State Block Grant with 43% less funding, and a two year time limit on rental assistance for working families. This dangerous proposal is currently before the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Subcommittee, scheduled for mark-up on July 14, 2025. If adopted, this proposal would threaten 10 million extremely low income people with homelessness and displacement, as soon as October 2025.
In Massachusetts alone, 363,000 people in 195,000 low income households would be affected. Unless the State immediately commits billions in new subsidies, a 43% funding cut would force owners and housing authorities to raise rents to 60% of income and/or terminate tens of thousands of low income seniors, disabled people and families, left to fend for themselves in the State’s overheated rental market.
Further, abruptly ending Project Based Rental Assistance for 60,400 privately-owned, HUD subsidized apartments, will severely disrupt the Massachusetts housing development industry, force owners into bankruptcy, and endanger affordable housing lenders. Private landlords who rely on 89,000 Section 8 Vouchers for steady revenue will likewise face chaos and disruption. Massachusetts’ affordable housing crisis will explode.
We urge you to contact THUD Subcommittee and Appropriations Committee leaders before July 14 to urge rejection of these irresponsible proposals.
The Administration’s FY 2026 discretionary budget request, also includes deep cuts of 54% for the Environmental Protection Agency, 43% to the National Institutes for Health, and 57% to the National Science Foundation, jeopardizing health and safety. Further, the Administration has illegally withheld and/or impounded more than $400 billion previously appropriated by Congress, leading to recent cuts for Massachusetts Public Schools, scientific research, and vital transportation projects that harm our state. These cuts reinforce the destructive attacks on federal workers engineered by Elon Musk’s DOGE, which have decimated staff at HUD, EPA, the Department of Education, the National Weather Service, and science agencies overall.
Congress must end these devastating cuts to essential federal workers and fully fund these vital programs, which are a key foundation for the Massachusetts economy. We urge you to convey the State GOP’s opposition to non-defense discretionary cuts, recissions, and illegal impoundments, as well.
Non-Defense spending cuts are designed not only to help fund tax cuts for the rich, but to also augment the July 4 mandatory spending bill, by funding the bloated Defense Department budget over $1 trillion for the first time, and increasing by 65% funds for the ICE Gestapo that is terrorizing our communities. These appropriation increases should likewise be rejected.
Of course, Non-Defense discretionary spending cuts are in addition to the devastating mandatory spending cuts to low income and working families signed into law on July 4 by President Trump, in order to pay for extended tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. Despite $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and Healthcare, these tax cuts will add trillions to the federal deficit, triggering a $500 billion sequester cut to Medicare in the near future. In Massachusetts, the cuts to Medicaid, Healthcare, and SNAP alone, will cost the State $45 billion over the next decade, putting intolerable pressure on the State budget. Overall, these changes will result in the greatest transfer of wealth from poor and working people to the ultra-rich in US history.
In short, we urge the Massachusetts GOP to protect our people and state by repudiating these unconscionable cuts in the immediate future. We eagerly await your response.
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.
Sincerely,
Just Budget and Tax Coalition Members, Arise & Resist Budget and Tax Justice Coalition, the LOFTE Network, and MAPA