JANESVILLE, Wis. (July 9, 2026) – Families Over Billionaires, in partnership with Main Street Alliance, Committee to Protect Health Care, and Opportunity Wisconsin, brought the Who Pays? National Bus Tour to Janesville this morning.

The groups hosted a Community Impact Forum at The Sandwich Bar, with local leaders, a health care professional, and local business owners, to talk about how policies in Washington, including the “The One Big Beautiful Bill” Act (OBBBA), have negatively impacted Janesville area families, businesses, and communities.

• Signed into law on July 4th last year, the OBBBA cut Medicaid and SNAP to deliver $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to billionaires and corporations.
• More than 22,000 Wisconsinites have lost their SNAP benefits
• More than 230,000 are expected to lose Medicaid
• Further, failure to expand ACA premium tax credits has significantly raised the cost of premiums and forced thousands of Wisconsinites to go without insurance this year.
• The law has put tremendous pressure on the state budget, as states are forced to pick up the tab.

Janesville was tenth on the 17-stop nationwide Who Pays? Bus tour, which started in Portland, ME on June 30th. The tour will hit 13 states before ending on July 16th in Tucson, Arizona. At every stop, local voices and leaders tell the story behind the headlines.

HIGHLIGHTS

State Representative Ann Roe, WI 44th Assembly District (pictured above) spoke of her fights in state house to expand medicaid coverage and cancer screenings: “These should not have been in partisan fights…The thing that I find really troubling or baffling is that the issues that we are talking about over 80% of the country, regardless of who or what party they belong to, they voted for.”

“When we lift those families, those young parents, those students, and our seniors, and when we lift them in our communities, guess what? The entire community lifts.”

Richard Neeno, The Sandwich Bar Co-Owner and Member of Janesville City Council: “The cost of goods has gone up exponentially… And then there’s the harder to quantify, the very scary issue of what are the macroeconomics of the country doing to pocketbooks, and how often people can dine out or buy…It’s the sort of thing that we wake up every morning wondering.”

Dr. Jill Cousino (pictured above), an OB/GYN with The Committee to Protect Health Care, spoke about the risks women and mothers face when they lose their health insurance: “People have health coverage for pregnancy…but then they lose their health insurance immediately after six weeks. Most of their insurance is now gone, and so those things that we’ve identified during pregnancy that could be concerns for the rest of their life can’t be followed, can’t be checked again.”

Kristen Crowell (pictured above), executive director, Families Over Billionaires stressed that choices made in Washington are holding us back as a country: “There is enough money that all of the things our communities need, like healthcare and food assistance and quality childcare, can be covered. But instead, Washington chooses to fund more tax cuts for the rich. It is important that we document how choices in Washington land in our communities and land on our kitchen tables, our small business tables.”

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.