U.S. House Republicans push through massive tax and spending bill slashing Medicaid
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
The Kentucky context
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was one of two Republicans who voted against the bill. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”
Massie, who has drawn Republican President Donald Trump’s wrath on several occasions including this week, called the measure a “debt bomb ticking.”
“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”
Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio is the other Republican who voted against the Trump-supported package.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.
The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.
President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.
“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the President’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”
Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”
Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”
“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”
The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.
The legislation would:
- Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
- Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
- Rework energy permitting;
- Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
- Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low income Americans to state governments; and
- Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low income people and some people with disabilities.
The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.
The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.
A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.
Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.
Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.
Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.
An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.
This is a developing report that will be updated.
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