Campaign Action
With a razor-thin 219-206 margin, House Republicans have passed their FY2018 budget, a $4.2 trillion spending and cuts measure that sets up their tax cut bill to progress through the Senate without being subject to a filibuster, provided they come up with a tax cut bill. This is a non-binding resolution that would set spending—and slashing—priorities for the Congress. Those priorities are a big problem, not just for Democrats but for the health of the nation.
The bill not only instructs congress to do massive tax cuts for the rich through the budget reconciliation process, it instructs lawmakers to reduce Medicaid spending by $1 trillion and Medicare by $473 billion. That's along with the $37 billion in cuts for affordable housing, $100 billion for Pell Grants, cutting Head Start by $3 billion, and essentially gutting the WIC program that provides food assistance to 1.25 million women, infants, and children.
That's so they can get $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich.