House Republicans on Tuesday night passed the budget blueprint that directs House committees to find $2 trillion in spending cuts in order to just partly pay for the $4.8 trillion in President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans.
The budget gives top-line numbers that Republicans want specific House committees to cut to get to that $2 trillion in spending reductions. And that will be a difficult task since the cuts will likely target popular programs like Medicaid and food stamps, which tens of millions of Americans rely on to stay healthy and put food on the table for their families.
“The quick math on the House budget shows a stark equation: The cost of extending tax cuts for households with incomes in the top 1%—$1.1 trillion through 2034—equals roughly the same amount as the proposed potential cuts for health coverage under Medicaid and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Sharon Parrot, president of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post.
“Under what set of values does a budget target those who struggle to pay their bills for severe cuts, while giving an annual tax cut averaging $62,000 for those who make $743,000 or more a year?” she continued. “The tax cut for these wealthy households is greater than the annual family incomes for most of the 72 million people—1 in 5 people in the U.S.—who have health coverage through Medicaid.”
For example, the budget calls for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts, which are expected to largely come from Medicaid.
Medicaid cuts that drastic will cause millions of low-income Americans to lose their health coverage, which could be politically disastrous for the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Their 2017 attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act led to a midterm drubbing in 2018, when Democrats retook control of the House for the first time in nearly a decade.
“Once Republicans took Medicare and Social Security off the table, the math became inescapable that Medicaid cuts would help pay for tax cuts. That's why the House budget resolution targets the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, for at least $880 billion in cuts over a decade,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, wrote in a post on Bluesky. “At some point, Republicans will have to get specific about the Medicaid cuts that contribute to the $880 billion Energy and Commerce Committee spending reduction target. Greater specificity about the Medicaid cuts, and who loses, will likely make them even more controversial.”
The budget also directs the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion in cuts. Republicans have admitted that those cuts are expected to come from the food stamps program, which helps feed roughly 42 million Americans annually.
Because both of these cuts would be politically disastrous, Republicans spent Tuesday lying about the budget in order to make the GOP lawmakers uncomfortable with such cuts feel safe enough to vote for the bill.
“The word Medicaid is not even in this bill,” Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana said at a Tuesday news conference on Capitol Hill, the same statement he made to Republican lawmakers in a closed-door conference meeting. “Democrats are lying about … what’s in the bill.”
But Democrats explained why that's false.
Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said at a Tuesday news conference:
Their resolution calls for at least, as a floor, $880 billion to be cut by what is under the purview of the Energy and Commerce Committee. If Energy and Commerce Committee said, 'We don't want to cut Medicaid. Instead, we will cut literally everything else we possibly can, 100%.' That only gets you about halfway to the $880 billion. So by definition, they have to, as a minimum, cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid.
What's more, the budget Republicans passed would increase the deficit by $2.8 trillion—something their own members pointed out on Tuesday before giving in and voting for the bill anyway.
“[W]e are going to accumulate $24T of additional debt in 10 years on top of $36T we already have … reaching $60 TRILLION!” Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana wrote in a post on X, explaining why she was going to vote against the budget. Ultimately, she also caved following a phone call from Trump himself.
Every Democrat in the House voted against the budget blueprint.
And they're now hammering Republicans who voted for it, pointing out the millions of constituents in GOP-held districts who will lose their health insurance and food stamps due to the cuts the budget calls for.
“We are fighting to make high quality health care more affordable. House Republicans are determined to enact the biggest Medicaid cut in American history. We need everyone engaged to stop them,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a post on Bluesky.
Thank you to the Daily Kos community who continues to fight so hard with Daily Kos. Your reader support means everything. We will continue to have you covered and keep you informed, so please donate just $3 to help support the work we do.
