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Think the House GOP's budget bill endorsed by the president is harmful to low-income families, working people, and the overall health of our society? You probably don't know even the half of it.
The House Republican budget passed Tuesday night calls for massive cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and help paying for college, among some other areas, to pay for huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses. This betrays President Trump’s campaign promises to protect families who struggle financially, as well as his specific pledge to not cut Medicaid, which provides health coverage for 72 million people. While raising costs for families and increasing both poverty and the number of people without health coverage, the budget would swell deficits — all to further Republicans’ expensive and skewed tax agenda.
Both the House and Senate budgets significantly miss the mark on what should be their basic goals: lowering costs, increasing opportunity, and responsibly addressing our nation’s long-term priorities, including reducing future economic risks associated with high deficits. But the enormity of program cuts called for by the House budget stand as a singular threat to the well-being of people in every state, city, and rural community, threatening to take away their health coverage, make health care more expensive, and make it harder to afford food and college.
The Senate should reject the House cuts both now and if Congress ultimately moves ahead with a second budget plan and reconciliation bill this year.
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 percent — $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 (SNAP).
The House Republican budget’s path of higher costs for families, more people without health coverage, increased poverty and hardship, and higher debt — all in service to tax cuts for the wealthy and profitable business interests — is the wrong direction for our nation.
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? 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. And the $62,000 figure doesn’t account for the likelihood that this budget would shower large corporations with more tax breaks, given that it allocates $900 billion more than extending the existing tax cuts would cost.
The enormous cuts this budget calls for would increase costs, hardship, and poverty for individuals and families across the country. To be clear, the specific proposals that House Republicans have been considering for weeks to make these program cuts are largely not about curbing fraud and abuse, as some claim. For example, proposals to cap federal funding, shift costs to states, or impose harsh work requirements that trip people up with red tape are aimed at cutting health coverage and food assistance for honest people who need help, not reducing fraud.
And the impact of these cuts could be grave: think of a person who loses health coverage through Medicaid and can’t get cancer treatment, an older and frail adult who loses the home-based care they need to stay out of an institution, a young adult who can’t get insulin to control their diabetes, a parent who skips meals so their children can eat, or an older worker who loses their job and has no way to buy groceries. Make no mistake, these cuts would affect people in every state and of all races and ethnicities. At the same time, the impacts would often be especially severe in poorer states with less ability to fill in for federal cuts and among Black, Latino, and Indigenous people and people in rural communities, who have lower incomes and thus are more likely to qualify for food assistance and health coverage.
The House budget would require the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut at least $880 billion; the Agriculture Committee to cut at least $230 billion; the Education and Workforce Committee to cut at least $330 billion; and other committees to also cut programs to reach a cumulative target of at least $1.5 trillion in cuts through 2034. The magnitude of these reductions would force congressional committees to make enormous cuts in Medicaid, SNAP, student loan assistance and other vital sources of support when they develop the “reconciliation” spending and tax bill that follows the budget resolution.
But as massive as these cuts are, they don’t show the full picture of the overall program cuts that the House budget may generate. The committee targets are minimums or “floors” — meaning the committees must cut at least that amount and may cut more. And a provision included by the House Budget Committee during its consideration of the resolution pushes the committees to cut more, by requiring the overall level of program cuts to reach $2 trillion to retain the full $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
Beyond this budget’s basic effects of taking away health, food, and other vital assistance from people who struggle to afford the basics and making student loans more expensive to partially offset tax cuts for the wealthy, it would have at least three other harmful impacts.
First, the House budget resolution and the proposals House Republicans are considering could result in enormous cost shifts to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, which are already facing tougher fiscal conditions than in recent years. For example, some of the proposed cuts in Medicaid and SNAP would force states to pick up a much larger share of the programs’ costs or leave people without needed help. In reality, states will not make up for all or even most of the federal cuts, and families will lose health coverage and food assistance.
Second, while this budget aims to extend all of the tax cuts skewed to the top, it fails to call for extending a tax cut that is well targeted to people who need it: the improved premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. Failure to extend this tax cut would raise health care premiums for more than 20 million people, including at least 3 million small business owners and self-employed workers.
And third, even with the budget’s huge cuts in assistance, and the suffering those cuts would inflict on individuals and families, it would still increase our nation’s debt because of the enormous cost of its tax cuts. When you strip away this budget’s fuzzy math with its $2.6 trillion macroeconomic gimmick — which is far beyond expert organizations’ estimates (including estimates of conservative organizations) of possible economic effects from extending the tax cuts from President Trump’s first term and enacting potential new tax cuts — the federal debt under the House budget would increase over the next ten years compared to Congressional Budget Office projections of current law.
Even with the budget calling for a $4 trillion increase in the statutory debt limit, we calculate this limit would be reached in November 2026, only 21 months from now, under the policies assumed under this budget.
The House Republican budget’s path of higher costs for families, more people without health coverage, increased poverty and hardship, and higher debt — all in service to tax cuts for the wealthy and profitable business interests — is the wrong direction for our nation. It is also directly at odds with the recent election in which so many people expressed concern about their ability to afford food, housing, health care, and other necessities — and at odds with the promises made to them by President Trump.
Republicans are hiding behind fantastic economic assumptions which they know are false in order to hide the true effects of their agenda—one that raises costs, strips away healthcare, and increases poverty—all in service of giving the super-rich another tax giveaway.
The budget plan that the House is scheduled to consider this week would add to the deficit as it calls on committees to cut $2 trillion primarily from programs that help people secure health coverage, buy groceries, and pay for college to partially offset a $4.5 trillion tax cut, with benefits that are skewed toward the wealthy. Yet the House Budget Committee (HBC) Republicans attempt to hide their plan’s additions to the deficit with unrealistic assumptions of how tax cuts will drive economic growth.
They assert that the economy will grow more than 40 percent faster each year over the coming decade than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects, yielding a ten-year “economic bonus” that would reduce the projected deficit by $2.6 trillion. Their budget math rests on this flawed bonus. Without it, the HBC plan would increase the deficit relative to CBO’s projections, even with its massive spending cuts in Medicaid and SNAP that would take away health care and food from people who are struggling to afford the basics.
This economic bonus is not credible.
CBO projects that real economic growth — growth after considering inflation — will average around 1.8 percent per year from 2026 to 2035. In contrast, the House assumes growth of 2.6 percent a year. This increase is far beyond a typical “rosy scenario” and instead reflects “fantasy math,” as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget aptly describes it.
HBC Republicans have defended their assumed growth rate by saying it is below the post-war historical average. But that is misleading. The nation’s labor force grew strongly in the post-war years, particularly as the baby boomers reached working age and because women joined the labor force in large numbers. Today, the baby boomers are retiring, and current population growth depends on immigration, which the Trump Administration is seeking to curb.
Republicans point to the extension of the expiring provisions of the 2017 tax cuts as a key driver of their assumed additional growth. But CBO comes to a much different conclusion. In its baseline projection, CBO assumes the tax cuts expire as scheduled and concludes that “the expiration of the individual income tax provisions of the 2017 tax act does not significantly affect CBO’s projections of real GDP.”
That means that extending the expiring tax cuts, as the Republicans propose, would similarly have little effect on economic growth. Overall, CBO has found that the positive economic effects of the tax cuts alone were quite modest, and that their high cost (which increases federal borrowing and leads to lower private investment) offsets any resulting economic growth. Thus, even if the costs of the tax cuts were completely offset, the economic bonus would be only a small fraction of what HBC Republicans claim. To the extent the program cuts harm investments in the future — economic support and good health care for children, education at all levels, medical and scientific research, infrastructure maintenance and development — those cuts work against better sustainable economic growth.
CBO is not alone in its findings. Economists at a range of other institutions — such as the Joint Tax Committee, Tax Foundation, Tax Policy Center, Penn-Wharton Budget Model, Yale Budget Lab, and American Enterprise Institute — have also examined the economic effects of extending the 2017 tax cuts. None came up with estimates anywhere near those assumed by the House plan.
The House Republicans point to other Trump Administration actions as further rationale for their economic assumptions, such as spending cuts, deregulation, and increasing production of fossil fuels. But their views of the impact of the Administration’s policies on the economy are one-sided, ignoring its policies that are likely to slow growth. For instance, the Administration’s policy of mass deportations and restrictions on new lawful immigration will dampen labor force growth. Analysts estimate that immigration will fall from 3 million in 2024 to 500,000 in 2026.
Similarly, the Trump Administration’s tariff policy could increase prices, possibly by 1.7 to 2.1 percent, and lower economic growth as much as 1.0 percentage point, according to recent estimates by the Yale Budget Lab.
In the end, the assumed economic bonus is a pure gimmick that House Republicans are using to try hide the true effects of their agenda that raises costs, takes health care away from people, increases poverty and hardship, worsens inequality, and increases the deficit.
Medicaid defenders are holding events across the country this week, starting Tuesday, to raise public awareness and mobilize Americans against the House GOP's proposal for $880 billion in cuts to the program that provides healthcare to tens of millions of low-income people, including children.
The in-person and virtual events were organized by the advocacy group Protect Our Care, which is also expanding its ad and billboard campaigns against the budget resolution that House Republicans unveiled last week.
The GOP budget blueprint calls for at least $4 trillion in tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit the richest Americans. Those tax breaks would be partially offset by steep cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs that many working-class families rely on to make ends meet or survive through financial emergencies.
If enacted, Protect Our Care warned, the GOP plan would result in "millions losing coverage, including children, new moms, seniors, and people with disabilities."
"Americans across party lines oppose cuts to Medicaid, and new polling finds that a majority of Americans think the government should spend more on healthcare—not less," the group said. "Throughout the week, speakers will discuss how these unpopular cuts will hurt families and call on lawmakers to protect access to healthcare, not take it away."
The events will kick off Tuesday with a "Medicaid Defense Press Conference" in Vista, California featuring U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). Later in the week, similar events will be held in New York, North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Maine.
"House Republicans are putting Medicaid on the chopping block—a move that would rip lifesaving healthcare away from tens of thousands of their own constituents."
The Protect Our Care events come as House Democrats are beginning to target Republicans in battleground districts in preparation for the looming high-stakes congressional fight over Medicaid.
The House Majority PAC (HMP), a top Democratic super PAC, wrote in a memo Tuesday that "while Donald Trump and House Republicans promised to 'love and cherish' Medicaid, House Republicans have gone full Matt Bevin"—a reference to the former Republican Kentucky governor who aggressively pursued Medicaid work requirements during his time in office.
Republicans in the U.S. House are now looking to impose Medicaid work requirements nationwide, even though most Medicaid recipients under the age of 65 already work. Research has repeatedly shown that work requirements do little to boost employment—but they are effective at booting people from programs by adding onerous bureaucratic hurdles.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated earlier this month that the GOP's plan to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients—which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called "common sense"—could strip benefits from around 36 million people across the country.
In its memo on Tuesday, HMP spotlighted the number of Medicaid recipients represented by House Republicans in competitive districts across the U.S.:
"The cuts currently pushed by House Republicans will be a defining issue in 2026, and HMP will hold them accountable for abandoning their constituents to further enrich the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations," the Democratic PAC said.
"In battleground congressional districts across the country," the organization added, "House Republicans are putting Medicaid on the chopping block—a move that would rip lifesaving healthcare away from tens of thousands of their own constituents—roughly half of whom are children."