By Juliana Vasquez | Staff Writer
Complete with about 870 pages, a plethora of legislative reforms and a name that promises change, the One Big Beautiful Bill will bring some changes to financial aid, taxes and healthcare.
Passed on July 4, 2025, the legislation details tax and healthcare cuts, food benefit cuts, financial aid revisions, boosts in defense spending and clean energy benefits cuts.
Some of these legislative changes could impact Baylor students, specifically those who utilize Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and federal financial aid. This legislation impacts students and the social welfare programs American citizens utilize.
According to Dr. Patrick Flavin, professor and chair of political science, the bill might not live up to its namesake.
“If you’re paying cursory attention to the news and you see something called the big, beautiful bill, it would make sense that you would think, ‘Oh, it must be good. The name is good. It must be a good thing,'” Flavin said.
Flavin advised students to remember that tax cuts must be paid for down the line. Overall, the legislation will increase the budget deficit. Meaning, regardless of what’s in the legislation, it will ultimately cost Americans a significant amount down the road.
Dr. Jeremy Everett, the founder and executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Policy, was most concerned with the impact this legislation would have on funding to SNAP.
“SNAP is the most effective program we have at addressing food insecurity in the United States. It’s a hugely valuable program for every dollar that comes into the local community,” Everett said.
SNAP provides food assistance to low-income individuals, with participation determined based on household income levels. In 2024, an average of 41.7 million U.S. residents benefitted from the program.
The bill stimulates two major changes to SNAP. The first is the tightening of regulations regarding who can earn SNAP benefits and for how long.
Second is a switch to the split of who funds SNAP. Originally, the federal government and states split the cost of SNAP in a 50-50 share. Moving forward, the split will shift from 50-50 to 75-20, with the states paying the brunt of the administrative costs.
The result is that if a state is not willing to increase the funding to SNAP, it can opt out of using SNAP altogether. According to Everett, this would be detrimental to America’s most vulnerable citizens.
“If that’s the best program we have to fight hunger in our country and it gets ripped away from us, there’s no institution that can step in and fill that gap … cutting a giant hole in the safety net. That would be catastrophic for families,” Everett said.
The populations most at risk of falling into this gap left by SNAP cuts are children and the elderly, Everett said.
“If the program goes away, you’re impacting child food security [and] child poverty, as well as senior adults living on fixed incomes. Those will definitely be the most vulnerable populations impacted by this,” Everett said.
For college students in particular, Everett said patience is the key. The bill’s effects won’t be evident for three years, so students should continue their studies. Having a college degree dramatically decreases someone’s chance of becoming food insecure.
“If you have a hard time making ends meet and you’re not able to put food on the table … talk to somebody at Baylor and tell them what you’re dealing with,” Everett said. “We want to make sure that all of our students have what they need to live as God intended.”
