LA CROSSE, Wis. (July 9, 2026) – One year after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, La Crosse area residents, small business owners, farmers, and elected leaders gathered Thursday to describe the real-life consequences of a law that took from working families to finance $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations.

Families Over Billionaires, together with Main Street Alliance and Opportunity Wisconsin, brought its nationwide Who Pays? Bus Tour to Burns Park, where speakers warned that cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, higher health care costs, and growing pressure on Wisconsin’s budget are already hurting families and local communities.

• More than 230,000 Wisconsinites are expected to lose Medicaid coverage.
• More than 22,000 people have already lost SNAP benefits.
• The expiration of enhanced ACA premium tax credits has increased insurance costs for thousands of Wisconsin families.
• Wisconsin taxpayers are now shouldering billions in additional costs shifted from the federal government.

Last summer, many of the same organizations rallied in western Wisconsin urging Rep. Derrick Van Orden to oppose the bill. Thursday’s event marked a return one year later to assess the law’s impact—and to hold elected officials accountable for supporting it.

EXERPTS

“Everyone is paying the price because Congressman Van Orden chose Donald Trump and billionaire tax breaks over the families he represents,” said Kristen Crowell, executive director of Families Over Billionaires. “We promised we’d come back one year later to hold him accountable—and that’s exactly why we’re here today.”

“Today’s economy is defined by greed, grift, and political graft,” said State Sen. Brad Pfaff. He described how working families pay more while billionaires get tax breaks and more political power. That’s bad for our economy, and it’s bad for our democracy, he stressed.

“People are angry—and they have every right to be,” said State Rep. Tara Johnson. She described how her constituents are frustrated and tired of watching politicians line the pockets of billionaires while working families struggle to make ends meet. “Knock it off! Stop lining the pockets of billionaires.”

Sarah Burns, owner of Omega Bakery in Holmen, said rising ingredient costs, tariffs on equipment, and customers with less money to spend have made staying afloat increasingly difficult: “This is the first time since we opened three years ago that our bakery hasn’t been able to support our family of four,” Burns said.

Paul Adams, who was once an organic dairy farmer, described how small farms have been pushed aside while large corporations profit and make our food systems worse: “It’s time we take this [country] back from the billionaires,” Adams said.

Khadijah Islam, Holmen school board member and community organizer, said that a system in which her mother, a 30-year educator, can no longer afford a middle class life, is designed to benefit those already at the top:

“The billionaire class and the politicians that they have bought and paid for…make working-class people feel like our economic hardship is the result of a moral failing rather than the intended outcome of their rigged system…They say they can’t possibly pay us a living wage while giving their CEOs million-dollar bonuses…”

La Crosse was the 11th stop on the 17-city Who Pays? Bus Tour, which began June 30 in Portland, Maine, and concludes July 16 in Tucson, Arizona. At each stop, local residents share how policies that favor billionaires and large corporations are affecting their communities.

Who Pays? bus tour national partners include: GenZ For Change, Protect Our Care, Committee to Protect Health Care, National Women’s Law Center, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, DemCast USA, National Nurses United, Oxfam, Unrig Our Economy, Americans for Tax Fairness and State Revenue Alliance.

Also see the latest op-ed from Kristen Crowell on Heartland Signal: “OP-ED: Billionaires got a break. The rest of us got the bill.”