As House Republicans try to ram their budget bill through the Rules Committee and the House floor today, national reporting highlights how this bill will bring about the largest transfer of wealth, from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest, in the history of this country. As Republicans hold hearings in the middle of the night, meet behind closed doors, and scramble to negotiate massive provisions, they seem to add even worse policies every hour. So-called Republican moderates are increasingly silent as Republicans plan to rip health care from even more seniors, children, and hardworking Americans and insert provisions that could trigger as many as nine states to end Medicaid expansion entirely. It has become increasingly clear that Republicans’ only goal is further lining the pockets of the richest Americans and corporations – even by ripping health care and basic resources from millions of working families.
Washington Post: Trump and GOP’s Tax Bill Would Force Cuts to Medicare, CBO Says.
- “Any cut in Medicare funding, economists say, would have a chilling effect on older Americans and people with disabilities at a time when a fast-aging population and rising health care costs are already straining the system. Many hospitals, especially in rural areas, rely on Medicare for more than half of their funding, said McBride of Washington University.”
- “Republicans are also proposing sweeping cuts to Medicaid that could leave nearly 9 million people without health care coverage and more than 7 million without insurance over 10 years. Those cuts are likely to put added strain on Medicare funding, Roberts said, particularly for the 13 million Americans who are enrolled in both programs and rely on Medicaid to cover Medicare premiums and co-pays.”
Politico: GOP Megabill to Save Congress Nearly $800 Billion — While Kicking Millions of People off Health Insurance.
- “A draft portion of the House GOP’s party-line megabill would lead to nearly $800 billion in savings over 10 years — but would lead to 8.6 million more people losing their health insurance at the same time, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.”
- “‘Trump and Republicans have been lying when they claim they aren’t going to cut Medicaid and take away people’s health care,’ ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said last week. ‘This is not trimming fat from around the edges — it’s cutting to the bone.’”
Politico: Wealthy Gain, Low-Income People Lose From GOP Megabill, Analysis Finds.
- “Tax cuts in House Republicans’ megabill would lead to increased assets for the richest Americans, while reducing them for the lowest-income households through cuts to federal spending on Medicaid and food aid, according to a new preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.”
- “But the top 10 percent of households would see their household resources rise 4 percent by 2027 and 2 percent in 2033, ‘mainly because of reductions in the taxes they owe,’ CBO said.”
Washington Post: Divided House GOP Tries to Push Trump’s Tax Bill Over the Finish Line.
- “The bill would extend tax cuts that Trump signed into law in 2017 that are otherwise due to expire at the end of this year, along with new changes to reflect Trump’s campaign promises — such as no taxes on tips and overtime wages — and would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on border security, the White House’s mass deportation campaign and funding for defense priorities and a ‘Golden Dome’ continental missile defense system. The Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan scorekeeper, projects that it will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. The national debt already exceeds $36.2 trillion. Hard-line conservatives said Tuesday that the legislation did not sufficiently cut spending to pair with trillions of dollars of new tax cuts or extensions of current rates, and they angled for deeper budget reductions to Medicaid and federal benefits programs.”
Bloomberg: Opinion: The GOP Tax Bill Ignores Decades of Economic Research.
- “The budget bill that Republicans are currently trying to push through the House includes steep cuts to the two largest programs that help low-income Americans: Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Part of the rationale for these reductions, aside from making space for tax cuts, seems to be that using public money to help low-income people is wasteful and inefficient.”
- “Now consider that the House budget bill will result in an estimated 10 million Americans losing Medicaid. Whether you care about the people themselves or how their fate will affect the economy, the result is needless loss.”
The New Republic: Republican Budget Bill Will Tear Apart Medicare as We Know It.
- “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report Tuesday finding that the GOP’s budget bill would automatically trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, exposing President Trump for lying that Medicare wouldn’t be touched. The CBO estimates that there would be about $45 billion in cuts in 2026, and $490 billion in cuts between 2027 and 2034.”
- “In March, Trump promised that there would be no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, with the White House even issuing a fact sheet attacking media reports that he and Elon Musk were open to such cuts. Now, though, the Republican budget bill includes $880 billion in cuts, largely to Medicaid, and Tuesday’s revelation confirms that Medicare cuts will be automatically triggered if the bill passes.”
Rolling Stone: ‘Intentionally Hiding’: GOP Tries to Sneak Through Medicaid Cuts in Dead of Night.
- “The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would make permanent President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were a boon to the wealthiest earners in the nation. In order to pay for those cuts, the GOP plans to kick millions of people off of Medicaid, food assistance, and other critical social safety net programs.”
- “‘It’s just over 100 days you guys have gone from promising to lower costs to ripping away people’s health care. Of course you don’t want anybody to know what you’re doing here,’ Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said around 1:30 a.m. ‘It’s because you know this bill betrays the people who voted for you.’”
- “The analysis also found that changes to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would lead to a significant drop in household resources for the lowest 10 percent of incomes over the next decade. The Republican bill would also result in around $500 million in cuts to Medicare, according to the new analysis.”
Bloomberg: Opinion: Yes, the GOP Bill Is Big. Beautiful, Not So Much.
- “The biggest single source of these Medicaid cuts is a decree that states require Medicaid recipients who are “able bodied adults without dependents” to put in at least 80 hours a month of work, community service, training, education or some combination thereof, which the CBO estimates will save $280 billion over 10 years. The House is now talking about speeding up its timetable for requiring states to do this, which would boost that number.”
- “These savings would be achieved by reducing the number of people who qualify for Medicaid coverage, and the evidence from an experiment with work requirements in Arkansas is that many of these will be people who have jobs or other responsibilities that meet the criteria but are unable to leap the bureaucratic hurdles to prove it (coverage losses were especially high, for example, among those without home internet).”
- “The legislation also prohibits federal financial participation in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage for those “without verified citizenship, nationality, or immigration status,” but this is expected to generate negligible savings (less than $1 billion over 10 years) because participation is already limited to “lawfully present immigrants,” although some states offer coverage for other immigrants out of their own funds.”