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The Republican budget bill remains in rocky territory after a night of contentious, acrimonious debate, during which Democrats repeatedly accused the GOP of using the cover of darkness to attempt to jam through unpopular legislation.
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 Medicaid, food assistance, and other critical social safety net programs.
Republicans scheduled a critical meeting of the House Rules Committee for 1 a.m. this morning. The marathon hearing — in which lawmakers questioned the chairs and ranking members of various committees involved in the production of the reconciliation bill — lasted over eight hours. It did not escape notice that the late-night hearing took place during hours when most journalists, government officials, and interested members of the public would be at home and asleep.
“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.”
“You have the most ineffective Congress in the century, you passed almost no legislation into law, and this is how you want to roll out your big centerpiece legislation at one in the morning?” McGovern added. “This isn’t just incompetence. It’s much more nefarious than that. You are intentionally hiding what you are doing. What an insult to the people of this country, what disdain you guys must have for the people who voted for you.”
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, noted that shortly before the hearing began, the Congressional Budget Office issued an updated analysis estimating that “the bottom 10 percent of Americans will actually be poorer as a result of this bill, with the biggest benefit going to the top 1 percent of Americans.”
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.
“What is also quite clear is that this bill is not entirely paid for, even after all of those cuts to Medicaid, all of those cuts to Medicare, all of those cuts to the Affordable Care Act and nutrition assistance and on and on, they don’t come close to paying for the cost of the tax cuts,” Boyle added. It’s “just taking on more and more to our national debt.”
Democrats also took the opportunity to hone in on some of the other absurdities in the legislation. In the latter hours of the hearing — when daylight had finally returned to the Capitol — Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, called out a provision in the bill that would repeal a tax on firearm silencers, at the same time that Republicans wanted to institute more stringent work requirements on SNAP recipients.
“I have no idea why we think it’s a good idea to repeal a tax on silencers when we are going to feed fewer children in our country as a result of this. It’s a moral damn failure is what it is,” Craig said.
In another exchange, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) asked House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) to read a line from his committee’s legislation that would repeal an excise tax on tanning beds.
“I don’t want to read the bill for you,” Smith responded to Fernández.
“They’re repealing an excise tax on tanning beds. They’re repealing a tax on silencers,” Fernández said after having another member read out the line item. “So if you have a tanning bed, you get a little bit of a tax break, and if you need a hospital bed in rural America, you’re out of luck.”
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, hospital executives and staff have warned that the deep cuts to Medicaid eligibility that the GOP is attempting to disguise as anti-waste legislation could force many hospitals — particularly in rural areas — to close their doors.
Despite having the majority in both chambers of Congress, as well as control of the White House, Republicans have struggled to pass any sort of legislation throughout Trump’s first months in office. As of this morning, several hardline members of the Republican caucus remained opposed to the “big, beautiful” bill. Overnight, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was forced to make concessions to the so-called “SALT Caucus,” a group of Republicans demanding an increase to the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions allowed in some states.
Johnson insisted that there was a “chance” the Budget Committee would move to a vote today, and met with several holdouts, including Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Andy Harris (R-Md.), and Keith Self (R-Texas.). On Tuesday, Trump made a rare trip to the Capitol to speak directly to Republicans and urge them to pass what he hopes will become his signature piece of legislation — to little discernible effect.
If Republicans do manage to get their ducks in a row and pass the bill out of committee and through a floor vote, the legislation will face a whole new round of opposition in the Senate.
The Democratic minority has been clear that they would provide no air or comfort to the other side of the aisle. To “every Republican member who votes for this. You own it. You own it,” McGovern said today. “You own every hospital that closes, every child that goes to bed hungry. Every senior who loses care and every American family forced to choose between groceries and rent, between their heating bill and their child care.
“You guys can force us to debate this bill in the dead of night, you can do it while the country sleeps. But the American people will wake up tomorrow, and I guarantee you they will wake up to how terrible your agenda is,” he added. “They will remember this moment.”
