If you scroll through social media or watch the news, you’ll see our members of Congress and special interest groups practically begging West Virginians to believe that the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” (HR 1) is good for us. But West Virginians know a bad deal when we see one. This legislation takes away health care and food assistance and raises costs for nearly all of us — while handing giant tax cuts to the wealthy. And with West Virginia among the states slated to be hardest hit by program cuts, it’s our communities who will pay the price.
The tax cut spin doesn’t hold up
Our members of Congress claim the bill delivers tax cuts for West Virginia families. But their claims do not hold up for everyday West Virginians. Most of the so-called “new” cuts they claim in their figures are already in place. More importantly, the dollar figures they cite are misleading — skewed by massive tax breaks for millionaires.
Here in West Virginia, the bottom 40% of households are expected to see their taxes increase compared with what they pay now, while the median household will get a tax cut less than half the size of the “average” touted by bill supporters. Meanwhile, the wealthiest households will reap the biggest benefits, with 80 percent going to the wealthiest 10 percent of households. Once you factor in tariffs and other provisions, independent experts project that by 2027, 99 percent of households nationwide will actually be worse off financially.
Cuts to health care and food assistance hit West Virginians hard
The real story of the bill isn’t tax cuts — it’s what those cuts cost. To pay for giveaways to the wealthy, Congress enacted the deepest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in our nation’s history. In our state, that means more than 50,000 West Virginians will lose their health coverage and 33,000 risk losing food assistance. That includes seniors, veterans, parents and people who worked their whole lives but hit hard times.
And those cuts will have rippling effects on all of us, whether we directly rely on the programs or not. Rather than increasing the workforce by “getting people to work” as promised, West Virginia is expected to see a loss of 6,000 jobs resulting from deep reductions in federal funds that currently go to health care providers, hospitals and grocers. Experts say both wages and GDP will fall as a result of the legislation, while the national debt will rise by trillions of dollars.
Hospitals that serve a significant Medicaid population will see reduced payments and higher uncompensated care (bills that go unpaid). Combined, this is expected to result in layoffs, reductions in health care services, higher prices for private insurance, and even hospital closures. Just this month, a medical group in Virginia announced the closure of three health care clinics in response to “the One Big Beautiful Bill and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery.”
Rising costs and hungry families
And while our members of Congress have promised that we have years to prepare, health care providers are making hard choices now, and some of the provisions will be felt right away. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this month that states are expected to start implementing new SNAP restrictions now. This will result in parents, veterans and older retired West Virginians up to 64 years old losing critical food assistance. Increases in hunger will drive more people to food pantries that are already stretched thin with need and the high cost of groceries. In January, state lawmakers will have to grapple with finding money in the state budget to cover the federal SNAP and Medicaid costs Congress forced onto the states.
Add in the tariffs baked into this bill, and everyday costs will keep climbing — from groceries to household goods — while paychecks don’t stretch as far. No one feels that squeeze more than working families here at home.
West Virginians deserve better
Supporters of HR 1 want to frame this debate as simply about tax cuts. That’s because when you zoom out, the picture is devastating: The wealthy get ahead while West Virginia families lose health care, food assistance and jobs, and see costs rise. Polling shows most Americans already believe this law benefits the rich at the expense of the rest of us — and they’re right.
While the fallout is already beginning, it is not too late to change course. Congress can reverse the most harmful provisions of HR 1 and put forward a real plan to lower costs, strengthen health care, and invest in communities. That’s what West Virginians need — not another round of broken promises and handouts to those at the very top.
Read Kelly’s full op-ed.
Kelly also recently authored a blog post to accompany her op-ed that further details why the Big Beautiful Bill’s tax provisions are a bad deal for West Virginians. The blog post points to research from our colleagues at theInstitute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). ITEP’s analysis of the Big Beautiful Bill (HR 1) compared with current policy found that in West Virginia:
Read Kelly’s full blog post.
Learn more about upcoming changes to Medicaid as a result of the Big Beautiful Bill (HR 1) in our videos here and here and upcoming changes to SNAP for veterans here.
The enactment of HR 1, the Budget Reconciliation Bill, supported by all four members of West Virginia’s Congressional Delegation, cements the largest cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food assistance in our nation’s history. While the legislation was federal, the effects will be felt locally, impacting families, food pantries, and health care clinics, as well as our state economy and budget, though many of the provisions are phased in over time.
Read our fact sheets below to see HR 1’s implications for West Virginians who get their health care from Medicaid and the ACA exchanges and HR 1’s implications for West Virginia lawmakers and health care providers.
Updated estimates from the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office now estimate the cost of the expanded Hope Scholarship in FY 2027 to be about $245 million rather than the $315 million projected earlier this year. While their office has framed this as a “cost savings,” in reality this still reflects exponential program growth far beyond what state lawmakers were originally presented with when passing the Hope Scholarship legislation. In fact, the updated cost estimate remains double the original fiscal note provided to lawmakers when they considered and approved the creation of the Hope Scholarship Program in 2021. At the time, the cost of expanding the program was expected to be just over $100 million. Instead, the Hope Scholarship is already on track to surpass that amount this year with an estimated cost of $110 million, and that cost will double again if lawmakers allow the program to become universal next year.
Due to growing participation, increasing funds awarded to families, and year-round enrollment, estimates and costs of the Hope Scholarship have fluctuated widely from year to year. This leaves lawmakers largely in the dark when determining funding for the Hope Scholarship and other state-funded programs such as public education or child care assistance.
Further, only about one-fifth ($24.6 million) of the $110 million needed to fund the Hope Scholarship this year came from the FY 2026 general revenue budget, while the remaining cost was funded through one-time supplemental funding. This means that rather than having to come up with double the money in the budget in FY 2027 to fund the expansion of the program, lawmakers will be looking at increasing by ten times the amount they budgeted via the state budget this year.
Regardless of the cost of the Hope Scholarship next year–whether $245 million, $315 million, or somewhere in between–state lawmakers and taxpayers will be stuck paying the bill, as its current structure is essentially an entitlement program. This will be particularly difficult after relying so heavily on one-time funding this year.
Before the Hope Scholarship explodes in cost yet again next year–all to go to families who typically can already afford private school or home school–lawmakers can practice fiscal responsibility and protect public education funding by repealing the Hope Scholarship expansion and adopting responsible program guardrails.
Read Tamaya’s full blog post.
Tamaya was recently featured in a town hall panel exploring the challenges currently being faced by public schools in the Mountain State. You can watch a recording of the town hall here.
More than one in seven West Virginians (286,737 residents) lived in poverty in 2024, including over 73,000 children, according to new estimates from U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey. West Virginia’s official poverty rate in 2024 was 16.7 percent, unchanged from 2023. West Virginia’s poverty rate was 4.6 percentage points higher than the national rate of 12.1 percent and the fourth highest poverty rate among the 50 states and D.C.
After falling to 20.1 percent in 2023, child poverty in West Virginia increased to 21.6 percent in 2024. With the increase, West Virginia had the fifth highest child poverty rate in the country.
Median household income in West Virginia rose to $60,798, up from $55,948 in 2023. Median household income measures the income of the typical household – or the household in the middle of the income distribution – and serves as a good indicator for how the middle class is faring. Despite the increase, West Virginia still ranked 50th out of the 50 states and D.C. for median household income and was $20,806 below the national average of $81,604.
Other highlights from the 2024 American Community Survey include the poverty rate for Black West Virginians falling to 22.3 percent, although nearly six percentage points higher the overall poverty rate. The poverty rate for seniors rose in 2024 to 12.9 percent. Poverty was lowest for those West Virginians with at least a bachelor’s degree at 5.2 percent, while those who had not completed high school had the highest poverty rate at 31.1 percent. The poverty rate for men was lower than the poverty rate for women, at 14.8 percent compared to 18.6 percent.
Policy choices that reduce poverty — or allow poverty to surge — matter. With poverty highest among children, Black West Virginians, and those without higher levels of education, addressing poverty within these categories should be a top priority in the state. Policies like a state-level child tax credit, affordable higher education, and increasing the state minimum wage all would help continue to reduce West Virginia’s high levels of poverty.
Read Sean’s full blog post.
Over the Labor Day weekend, West Virginia’s Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) quietly implemented a new plan for feeding the thousands of people under its control. On Saturdays and Sundays, DCR would no longer serve three meals per day – as it has done for more than a decade. Instead, the more than 9,500 people behind bars in West Virginia received two meals each day.
In one prison facility, this meant a so-called “brunch” at 8:30 a.m. and a dinner at 3:30 p.m. – a gap of 17 hours between dinner and breakfast the next day.
DCR’s own rules – still posted on its website – are clear: “Food service will prepare and serve three (3) meals during each twenty-four (24) hour period, with no more than fourteen (14) hours between the evening meal and breakfast.”
On August 25, the WVCBP made a Freedom of Information Act request for the new food menus and updates to this Food Services policy. As of September 4, DCR had yet to respond or make the requested information available on its website. But as WVCBP published this blog post, a news story reported that DCR decided to reverse course. According to DCR’s statement, the reduced meal service was a “test,” but DCR was “no longer pursuing this as an option.”
DCR’s “test” is proof that this is not just about the rules, which were not followed in this case and can be changed with a stroke of the DCR Commissioner’s pen. Nor is this just about the legal standards governing basic treatment of people in jails and prisons. This is endemic. The standards set by courts and lawmakers are so low that the mere experience of incarceration has been shown to cut years off one’s life.
This is about how we allow our state to harm its residents in service of out-of-state corporations motivated by profit.
In our 2023 report, The High Costs of Cheap Food, we showed how food behind bars has been harmful for years. It’s not merely unappetizing.
In 2022, former DCR employees submitted sworn affidavits acknowledging how jail residents were “regularly served spoiled milk for breakfast,” “given inadequate portions of food,” and “commonly given what appeared to be undercooked or rotten meat.” DCR meals are high in sodium, starches, and sugar, with fresh fruit and greens offered sparingly.
Incarcerated people already suffer disproportionately higher rates of chronic illness. Cheap, processed food exacerbates this struggle. A Bureau of Justice Statistics report found that people behind bars “suffer from higher rates of diabetes and heart disease than the general public, conditions caused or at minimum exacerbated by the typical prison diet.” Between 2003 and 2024, state spending on prison medical care has gone up $28.6 million – a 226.5 percent increase in two decades.
There may not be private prisons in West Virginia, but in an echo of the state’s history of extraction, the state has privatized most aspects of life behind bars: from phone calls to medical care to nutrition. Each year, West Virginia sends millions of dollars to out-of-state companies who have bid to provide these essential services at the lowest cost to the state. The vendor responsible for providing jail and prison meals is Pennsylvania-based Aramark Correctional Services.
The multi-billion-dollar company operates in hundreds of jails and prisons despite years of scandal: stale and moldy food in New Jersey prisons; food shortages in Ohio; a Colorado jail that served food containing the metal shavings of a broken kitchen machine; and the state of Michigan imposing thousands of dollars in fines for food shortages, unauthorized menu substitutions, and sanitation violations.
This is not unique to Aramark. For-profit meal service in jails and prisons has produced bad food – and less of it.
A New Jersey Aramark worker explained: “The portions we were required to serve were really small. You could eat six portions like the ones we served… and still be hungry. If we put more than the required portion on the tray the Aramark people would make us take it off.”
People survive by turning to commissary – a modern-day company store that sells food and other necessities at artificially high prices. With West Virginia prison jobs paying less than $1.50 an hour, the financial burden falls on loved ones outside of prison. One woman in prison told us she spent 75 percent of the money her family sent her on commissary food.
In 2022, DCR signed a five-year contract with Union Supply Group (USG) to provide commissary services. That same year, Aramark acquired USG.
When Aramark sacrifices quality in the dining hall, it makes higher profits. When incarcerated people supplement insufficient meals at the commissary, Aramark makes higher profits. A few months after the acquisition, Aramark announced “the highest annual revenue” in the company’s history.
And the profiteering does not end there. For each commissary sale, USG pays DCR a commission. DCR gets a 10 percent kick-back for adult prison sales, and 20 percent for sales made in jails or juvenile facilities. When USG makes money selling items that DCR does not provide, DCR also makes money.
Put simply, DCR has a direct financial incentive to leave residents underserved.
Restoring thousands of weekend meals is merely the first step. DCR should issue a public guarantee that the decision to serve two meals a day will be permanently reversed. They must also make more and healthier food available by ending race-to-the-bottom privatization in its facilities.
And if the new DCR Commissioner, David Kelly, wants to save money on food, we have a real solution: reduce the number of people incarcerated in West Virginia.
Read Sara’s full blog post.
McDowell and Taylor counties! Do you have questions about how federal funding changes will impact health care in your community?
Join the WVCBP for a community conversation where you can:
You can find details about date, time, and location for the respective community conversations in the flyers below. At each event, a presentation will be provided by WVCBP staff.
You can RSVP for the McDowell County event here and the Taylor County event here.
For more info, please email our community engagement coordinator, Alex.
Do you have questions about how recent federal funding changes will impact health care access and your community?
The WVCBP is here to help. We are offering to host community conversations for concerned community members to:
If you are interested, please fill out this form and we will be in contact with you about scheduling a community meeting near you!
Nourishing Networks is a food access planning workshop designed to foster a network of community members that can share and exchange knowledge around food access barriers that exist in their communities and work together to create long-term strategies that advance community food security.
Join the town hall Monday, October 6 from 10am-2pm at Phat Daddy’s on The Tracks (1634 6th Ave., Charleston, WV 25387).
You can register for the event here.
