In a setback, the House budget bill is stuck in committee for now; talks resume Sunday
***UPDATE May 16, 2025***
Why this matters to women: Short version—because the odds are high someone you love will be affected by health coverage or other cuts to pay for Trump’s tax cut, 45% of which benefits only the top 5% of wage earners (income of $450K+). More here. Catch up with prior episodes here and here.
UPDATE COB 5/15/2025: In a “stunning setback,” hard-liners on the Right joined with all Democrats on the House Budget Committee in blockeing the budget bill, which puts Speaker Johnson’s (arbitary) Memorial Day deadline for passage at risk. Read more here. Here’s a diagram of who increases/decreases the deficit in the current proposal. Remember the addition to the deficit is underwritten largely by a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid (primarily) and the SNAP program.
UPDATE 5/13: “In a brief letter to Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), the CBO said the committee’s reconciliation recommendations would reduce deficits by more than $880 billion by 2034 and “would not increase on-budget deficits in any year after 2034.” See more here. Note this doesn’t take away from the coming craziness at the hearings—it just confirms included (primarily Medicaid) cuts will meet the dollar amount required to underwrite Trump’s plans.
As expected—because it was the only place there was enough money for the cuts Trump’s demands required—the House has released its budget bill with hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to MEDICAID. There’s something in there about SOCIAL SECURITY as well to meet Senate regulations on budget reconciliation, but apparently it there are plans to offset a cut with some type of “special deduction.” Stay tuned on that; it’s not yet searchable in the news but I saw it flash by.
The bill was released today, with hearings in the multiple involved Committees starting tomorrow afternoon. Hearings are expected to be heated and lengthy. One thing we aren’t hearing about yet: Trump telling Congress last week they could tax the rich “a little bit.” (More in prior posts.)
Watch the May 13 Committee budget hearings on the National Medical Association website or on C-Span; check the Senate website for more options.
The biggest points of contention (that we know about so far):
Medicaid cuts: There will be heat from both sides of the aisle to reduce the cuts, and heat from fiscal hawks in the House to increase the cuts.
The mantra remains that the cuts will focus on “waste, fraud and abuse,” but as DOGE discovered, there’s a whole lot less of that than they’d hoped—apparently no more (and probably less) than 8% or less of the number DOGE promised. More here.
But no worries. “In a Wall Street Journal opinion article published Sunday ahead of the bill’s release, Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) indicated the changes to Medicaid shouldn’t be seen as a cut. ‘Undoubtedly, Democrats will use this as an opportunity to engage in fear-mongering and misrepresent our bill as an attack on Medicaid. In reality, it preserves and strengthens Medicaid for children, mothers, people with disabilities and the elderly—for whom the program was designed.’”
SALT cap (State and Local Tax deduction): The bill calls for an increase in the cap to $30K, but that’s tens of thousands less than high-tax states say is required.
Bottom line: House members will have only had tonight to review the bill before the hearings, and it’s going to be a very long night, fraying tempers even more tomorrow. Drama is inescapable. And until the bill is examined by the CBO, we won’t know the entire financial impact, so speculation and posturing will run rampant.
Regardless of the CBO analysis, everyone in DC has known for months that cuts of about a trillion dollars are required to fund Trump’s tax cut, and the only place that kind of money is available is in the three programs to which, by law, participants are entitled1: Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare. If the tax cut and Trump’s plans to increase defense and border security are to be funded, significant cuts will impact one or more of those three programs. Only Congress can change the laws about those that they enacted previously.
In the meantime, Republican confidence in Trump’s strategy and direction have been shaken by the economy. As the AP reports, “Lawmakers are increasingly uneasy, particularly amid growing economic anxiety over Trump’s own policies, including the trade war that is sparking risks of higher prices, empty shelves and job losses in communities nationwide. Central to the package is the GOP priority of extending tax breaks, first enacted in 2017, that are expiring later this year. But they want to impose program cuts elsewhere to help pay for them and limit the continued climb in the nation’s debt and deficits.”
That’s why they’re called “entitlements”—because Congress passed laws making recipients entitled to those program benefits. To hear some say the word, you’d think entitlements are something dirty done in the dark by someone they’ve never heard of. “I don’t know him, I’ve never met him, but they say…”