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House GOP Advances Budget After Blocking Amendments to Protect Food Benefits, Medicaid
"Instead of choosing to protect the American people, they chose to protect billionaires and corporations," said the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Feb 14, 2025
House Republicans advanced their budget plan out of committee Thursday night after a 12-hour markup session during which they rejected dozens of Democratic amendments, including proposed changes that would have protected Medicaid and federal nutrition benefits from the deep cuts the GOP hopes to impose to help finance trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the richest Americans.
The House Budget Committee advanced the Republican resolution, unveiled earlier this week, in a 21-16 vote along party lines. Prior to the vote, GOP members agreed to adopt an amendment offered by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) that, according toPolitico, effectively caps "the cost of the tax cuts at $4 trillion, with a dollar-for-dollar increase in that ceiling if Republicans cut more spending, up to a total of $2 trillion in cuts."
Democrats on the panel offered more than 30 amendments to the budget resolution, all of which Republicans rejected.
"Each of our amendments was a direct effort to shield the American people from the reckless cuts embedded in this proposal, cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable while giving trillions of dollars of handouts to the ultra-rich," Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in his closing remarks at Thursday's hearing. "We fought to protect Medicaid and Medicare, ensuring that seniors, low-income families, children, and people with disabilities don't see their healthcare stripped away."
"We proposed amendments to maintain funding for public education, ensuring that schools remain adequately resourced and that teachers don't bear the burden of budget shortfalls," Boyle continued. "And we stood up for veterans who risked their lives for this country and deserve more than empty rhetoric. They deserve fully funded healthcare, food assistance, and the benefits they earned through their service. Yet, despite the clear benefits of these proposals, Republicans oppose all of them."
"Instead of choosing to protect the American people," he added, "they chose to protect billionaires and corporations."
"This isn't government of, by, and for the people; it's government of, by, and for billionaires."
The Republican budget blueprint calls for more than a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provide healthcare and food aid to tens of millions of low-income Americans.
"These aren't just numbers," Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, stressed in response to the House GOP resolution. "The loss of Medicaid means, for example, a parent can't get cancer treatment, and a young adult can't get insulin to control their diabetes. Cuts to food assistance mean a parent skips meals so their children can eat or an older person who lost their job has no way to buy groceries."
In addition to advancing the GOP's far-right ideological project, such cuts would partly offset the costs of Republicans' proposed tax breaks—which would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest people in the country, including the billionaires in President Donald Trump's Cabinet.
"Republicans are cutting Medicaid and SNAP to pay for tax breaks for the richest 1% of Americans," the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness wrote in a social media post on Thursday. "They are literally taking $1.1 TRILLION away from you, and giving it to the wealthiest people in the country."
Thursday's vote marks a first step toward passage of a sprawling, filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package that will include a slew of Republican priorities.
But the House GOP must resolve its differences with Senate Republicans, who are pushing for two bills instead of one. The Senate plan, which Republicans advanced out of committee earlier this week, also calls for major cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
"This Republican budget opens the door to massive cuts for families," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said Thursday. "Democrats on the committee offered amendment after amendment to protect healthcare, housing, and education—all of the foundations working families need to thrive—and Republicans blocked every single one of them, all to later divert those cuts into massive tax breaks for the richest Americans."
"This is the Great Betrayal," Merkley added. "Trump campaigned on protecting families, but President Trump and Senate Republicans are all about protecting their billionaire friends. This isn't government of, by, and for the people; it's government of, by, and for billionaires."
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House GOP Budget Just Another Extreme Giveaway to the Rich
The budget makes the Republican agenda clear: costly tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses, paired with deeply harmful cuts in programs and services for families and communities.
Feb 13, 2025
The House Republican budget released Wednesday by Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington is an extreme giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of families who already have a hard time making ends meet. It would raise families’ healthcare, food, and college costs; increase the nation’s economic risks; and worsen poverty and hardship for tens of millions of people, while doubling down on huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses. This budget plan reflects a stark betrayal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to protect families who struggle financially.
The proposed budget’s reconciliation instructions—the directives to the tax-writing and other committees that set up a special fast-track process for passing budget and tax legislation—make the Republican agenda clear: costly tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses, paired with deeply harmful cuts in programs and services for families and communities. This is an upside-down plan that prioritizes the wealthy and well-connected over families for whom the cost of healthcare, college, and food is a serious concern. A reconciliation bill that meets the reconciliation directives to each committee would add trillions to the debt over the decade.
For weeks, House Republicans have been circulating proposals that would take health coverage and food assistance away from millions of people and raise the cost of student loans to offset part of the cost of extending the expiring 2017 tax cuts. Based on various proposals, 36 million people or more could be at risk of losing their health coverage through Medicaid, and more than 40 million people could receive less help from SNAP to buy groceries, millions of them potentially losing their food assistance altogether. About 5 million undergraduate students a year use federal student loans to pay for college, and many are at risk of higher costs to go to college given the cuts assigned to the Education and Workforce Committee. Millions of borrowers no longer in school could also be at risk for higher loan costs.
Extending the tax cuts for the top 1% costs $1.1 trillion through 2034, roughly the same amount they are proposing in cuts for millions who rely on Medicaid for health coverage and who use SNAP to buy groceries.
These aren’t just numbers. The loss of Medicaid means, for example, a parent can’t get cancer treatment, and a young adult can’t get insulin to control their diabetes. Cuts to food assistance mean a parent skips meals so their children can eat or an older person who lost their job has no way to buy groceries. These cuts will affect people in every state and of all races and ethnicities, but the impacts will often be especially severe in poorer states and among Black, Latino, and Indigenous people and people in rural communities, who have higher poverty rates and thus are more likely to qualify for food assistance and health coverage. Rather than expanding opportunity, the budget would make it harder for people to afford the healthcare and food they need to survive and succeed.
In addition to taking food assistance and health coverage away from people who need it, the budget plan could result in enormous cost shifts to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, which are already facing tougher fiscal conditions than in recent years. And when they can’t meet those higher costs, the impacts on people and families will be severe.
All of this for what? To give tax cuts to high-income people for whom the cost of eggs or prescription drugs is at most an afterthought. The spending cuts required by the reconciliation instructions total $1.5 trillion, which is about the cost of extending the expiring tax cuts through 2034 just for those with incomes above roughly $400,000. Extending those tax cuts would give households with incomes in the top 1%, who make roughly $743,000 a year or more, a tax cut averaging $62,000 a year—significantly more than the total income of most households at risk of losing Medicaid or SNAP.
Even as Republicans promise to extend tax cuts skewed to the top, they are noticeably silent about extending one tax cut that is well targeted to people who need it: the improved premium tax credits that since 2021 have made Affordable Care Act marketplace health coverage far more affordable. Failure to extend this tax cut would raise premiums for more than 20 million people, including at least 3 million small business owners and self-employed workers, and render an estimated 4 million people uninsured.
Outside of the reconciliation instructions, the budget blueprint calls for significant additional, unspecified cuts, including cuts to the part of the budget that funds K-12 education, Pell Grants for college students, medical research, transportation and flight safety, clean air and water projects, and customer service at the Social Security Administration and the IRS.
The Numbers
The budget resolution directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit by $880 billion over 10 years, a target Republicans have indicated they will hit primarily by cutting Medicaid. Similarly, it directs the House Agriculture Committee to reduce the deficit by $230 billion over 10 years, which the committee would achieve primarily by cutting SNAP benefits, restricting eligibility, or both. And it directs the Education and Workforce Committee to reduce the deficit by $330 billion, the bulk of which is likely to come from making student loans more expensive.
These cut numbers are a “floor”; committees could cut even more as the legislative process advances. The budget resolution even includes a non-binding policy statement indicating a desire to make deeper cuts. (The directive to the House Ways and Means Committee may also assume cuts to energy tax credits, which would increase utility bills, imperil energy reliability, and threaten jobs and investment nationwide.)
This budget also cuts myriad investments in the budget area that covers everything from schools to roads, medical research, assistance with rents, and administering Social Security, known as non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending. In 2024, total NDD funding outside of veterans’ medical care was 14% below the 2010 level, after taking into account inflation and population growth, and it will likely fall further in 2025, when appropriations are finalized. The House Republican budget would continue this disinvestment in the future.
The House Republican budget’s path of less opportunity, higher poverty, and more inequality is the wrong direction for our nation.
As noted above, the budget plan could result in enormous cost shifts to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments. Some of the proposed cuts in Medicaid and SNAP would force them to pick up a much larger share of the programs’ costs or leave people without needed help. Cuts in funding for education, childcare, transportation, and other services would also leave states and localities to fill in the holes or see serious degradation in basic public services. If some states are better able than others to fill in those holes, the already large differences among states in areas such as education funding and quality will grow.
The budget would cut Medicaid, SNAP, and a broad set of public services and make college more costly, but not to reduce deficits or respond to a national emergency; instead to offset a portion of Republicans’ profligate tax agenda. The reconciliation instructions allow for the Ways and Means Committee to increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion through 2034. This is $900 billion more than is needed to extend the expiring 2017 tax provisions over that time period, signaling that more tax cuts will be added on top of the already expensive 2017 tax cuts and could include additional regressive corporate tax cuts. (Note that the reconciliation directives only go through 2034, so include nine years of new tax policy because the 2017 tax cuts are already in effect through 2025.)
Underscoring the House Republicans’ upside-down priorities: extending the tax cuts for the top 1% costs $1.1 trillion through 2034, roughly the same amount they are proposing in cuts for millions who rely on Medicaid for health coverage and who use SNAP to buy groceries. This is the same old trickle-down nonsense that has dramatically worsened inequality in income and wealth.
As large as the tax cuts are, the Budget Committee claims that the budget plan, if followed, would achieve deficit reduction by using unreasonable estimates of economic growth and its resulting impact on government revenues and spending. Their claimed macroeconomic “bonus” of $2.6 trillion over 10 years is far larger than independent estimates of macroeconomic effects of extending the tax cuts done by diverse entities like the Tax Foundation, Tax Policy Center, Yale Budget Lab, Joint Committee on Taxation, Congressional Budget Office, and Penn-Wharton Budget Model. While these were not estimates of this precise budget plan, it’s extremely unlikely that they would show a bonus anywhere near this size. And it should be noted that the Trump administration’s planned mass deportations (supported by the increased spending in the budget plan) as well as restrictions on new immigration and tariffs are all projected to reduce economic growth.
When you strip away the budget’s “bonus,” the budget would increase the debt by $1.6 trillion over the next decade—driven by expensive tax cuts—while increasing poverty, increasing the cost of a college education, raising families’ costs for food and healthcare, and leaving more people without health coverage. Coupled with the potential for tariffs to raise consumers’ prices for many goods, this agenda is a stark betrayal from the -resident’s promises during the campaign to look out for people who face financial struggles.
The House Republican budget’s path of less opportunity, higher poverty, and more inequality is the wrong direction for our nation. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans appear poised to head in a similar direction, only through two reconciliation bills rather than one. Congress should return to the drawing board and craft a budget that broadens opportunity, lowers costs, and invests in people and families, while responsibly raising the revenues needed to make those investments and reduce economic risks associated with high debt.
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120+ Groups Warn Biden Against Backing Sanctions for ICC
Doing so would align the U.S. "with authoritarian tactics of threatening judges and independent judicial institutions," the groups cautioned.
May 23, 2024
As the Biden administration signals its willingness to work with congressional Republicans to potentially sanction International Criminal Court officials over their pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, more than 120 rights groups on Wednesday urged U.S. President Joe Biden to "oppose the threats and calls for punitive actions" emanating from Congress.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said earlier this week that he has formally applied for arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged "crimes of causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict," and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif for alleged "extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape, and sexual assault in detention."
Referring to Senate Republicans' threats to retaliate against ICC officials if they issue arrest warrants for the Israelis—and Secretary of State Antony Blinken's stated willingness to work with GOP lawmakers on sanctions—the rights groups argued in a letter to Biden that acting on such efforts "would do grave harm to the interests of all victims globally and to the U.S. government's ability to champion human rights and the cause of justice."
"While the United States is not an ICC member country, Republican and Democratic administrations have supported the court in specific cases, and the U.S. has assisted arrest operations to bring justice to victims in central Africa," the groups noted. "Your own administration has recognized the court's essential role to address serious crimes in Ukraine and Darfur."
The letter condemns former U.S. President Donald Trump's sanctions targeting then-Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other ICC officials over the court's effort to investigate U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan as "an affront to justice" that "threatened to undermine the ICC's effective functioning."
"Regrettably, those sanctions aligned the United States with authoritarian tactics of threatening judges and independent judicial institutions," the groups lamented.
The letter asserts:
The ability of the ICC to provide justice for victims requires full respect for its independence. A selective approach to judicial decisions undermines the credibility, and ultimately, the force of the law as a shield against human rights violations and abuses. Your administration appeared to recognize this in repealing the Trump-era sanctions, noting that U.S. concerns "would be better addressed through engagement with all stakeholders in the ICC process." We urge you to ensure that any disagreement about the court's process is pursued through proper judicial channels under the court's treaty.
U.S. and Israeli officials often note that neither country is a party to the Rome Treaty that established the ICC. However, the court has noted its "jurisdiction in relation to crimes committed on the territory of Palestine, including Gaza," as well as "over crimes committed by Palestinian nationals inside or outside Palestinian territory."
The groups' letter comes as the death toll from Israel's relentless 230-day assault on Gaza approaches 36,000, with more than 80,000 others wounded and at least 11,000 people missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of damaged or destroyed homes and other buildings throughout the embattled Palestinian enclave. Around 9 in 10 Gazans have also been forcibly displaced, with hundreds of thousands of refugees sheltering in the southern city of Rafah, where Israeli forces are now invading.
During an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour earlier this week, Khan said the ICC should represent "the triumph of law over brute force, grab what you can, take what you want, do what you will."
"We will not be dissuaded," he vowed.
The Biden White House and Republican Congress are considering sanctions against ICC Chief Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC as he seeks arrest warrants for their ally Benjamin Netanyahu. But Khan told me the court “will not be dissuaded”: pic.twitter.com/T6pBtjyX7f
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) May 23, 2024
The United Nations' International Court of Justice—which is weighing a wider genocide case filed by South Africa and supported by over 30 other nations—is expected to rule Friday on a related South African request for the tribunal to order a cease-fire in Gaza.
The U.N. Human Rights Council in March found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by at least hundreds of legal experts around the world.
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