To the editor:

So the president has signed the budget bill for our country. Congress passed it and he happily signed it even though the majority of the American people in poll after poll expressed great concern over many aspects of it.

Ohio Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted voted for the bill, too. They will own the results of it in Ohio.

Our representative in the House of Representatives, Michael Rulli, happily posted on his X account that this bill would “Secure the border, cut taxes for working families, protect women’s sports, unleash American energy and require voter ID.”

Let’s address these few claims. If by securing the border, you mean severely restricting all means of immigration and turning our communities into police states where masked men grab people off the street, then yes. If cutting taxes means giving some Americans a meager tax cut while allowing corporations and the richest among us to continue to secure huge tax breaks, then yes. If protecting women’s sports means discrimination and not solutions to complicated issues, then yes. If unleashing American energy means disregarding environmental impacts, climate change considerations and the innovations and jobs in “green” industries taking place across the country, then yes. If voter ID means restrictions and burdensome paperwork in a system that time and time again has proven to be safe already, then yes.

Rulli neglects to mention the cutting of SNAP benefits, the removal of millions of people from Medicaid, the obscene amounts of money being funneled to ICE, the building of camps to house people without due process and the explosion of the country’s debt under this bill.

This Congress and so many before it have failed the people. I wait for the day when serious people offer serious bipartisan solutions for all of us. That day is not today.

Ohioans and citizens from all states must demand better. And we must vote.

Lynne Baird

Steubenville