As Congress debates the federal budget, the Senate’s proposal makes one thing clear: millions of people will lose so that the wealthiest few can gain. Senate Republican leaders are rushing to advance a federal budget bill this week that, in many ways, would cause even more widespread harm to Californians than the version passed by the House. Like the House bill, the Senate plan would take health care and food assistance away from millions of people, including workers, parents, and children, to help fund massive tax breaks for the wealthy and fuel policies that terrorize communities and tear families apart.

If the Senate plan moves forward, here’s what’s at stake for Californians:

Health care would be ripped away from Californians across the state. Millions could lose access to life-saving treatments, routine doctor visits, and health-sustaining medications as health care funding gets slashed. The Senate plan, like the House bill, would make the deepest cuts to Medicaid (Medi-Cal) ever proposed, harming all Californians by destabilizing our health system. These cuts could mean the difference between life and death for workers, children, people with disabilities, people who rely on rural hospitals, and many more. The Senate bill goes even further than the House version. It would impose harsh and burdensome work-reporting rules on many parents, even though most working-age Medi-Cal enrollees already work. Past experience shows that many would lose coverage just by getting tangled in Republicans’ red tape.

Food assistance programs would be gutted, leading to increased hunger for millions of people already struggling with the high cost of living. The Senate bill would make historically deep cuts to SNAP (CalFresh) food assistance and maintain many of the same harmful provisions. For example, basic nutrition for millions of children would be at serious risk due to harsh, counterproductive time limits for many parents, grandparents, and other caregivers. The Senate plan would go even further than the House and strip out current exemptions from this harsh time limit for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people who have aged out of foster care, putting these already vulnerable groups at risk of hunger and health complications. The plan would also break the 50-year commitment to SNAP as a federal responsibility by shifting massive new costs to California that the state cannot absorb.

Immigrants, including refugees, people granted asylum, survivors of domestic abuse, and certain victims of sex and labor trafficking, would lose access to essential services. In addition to taking away food assistance, financial assistance for health coverage, Medicare, and federal student financial aid from people living in the US who have been granted humanitarian protections, the Senate plan would end federal funding to help states provide Medicaid (Medi-Cal) to these groups. It would also slash federal funding that states receive for emergency services for individuals who would qualify for the Medicaid expansion if not for their immigration status, adding more costs to states. Plus, the Senate plan would exclude over 1 million California children of immigrants, mostly US citizens, from the Child Tax Credit, and it would direct about $100 billion to immigration enforcement, fueling arrests, detentions, and deportations that tear families apart.

Tax giveaways would go to the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. As millions of people face higher costs and fewer services, wealthy heirs, owners of multimillion-dollar partnerships, and private equity investors would be showered with massive new tax cuts. The Senate bill retains most of the House plan’s tax cuts, which would cost trillions of dollars and be highly skewed to the wealthy. Meanwhile, it blocks low- and middle-income families from accessing tax credits to help meet their basic needs, putting millions of families at risk of losing access to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and excluding millions of children from an increase in the Child Tax Credit. Plus, any tax benefit low-income households receive would largely be offset by higher costs due to cuts to health care and food assistance.

Californians deserve a budget that centers care, not cruelty. Voting for this plan would break federal leaders’ election promises to lower costs for everyone and help families who are struggling to make ends meet. Federal policymakers must reject this unpopular plan — and any other — that fails to improve the well-being of everyday people with low and middle incomes.