Latest news with #WorkRequirements
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Republicans seek tougher Medicaid cuts and lower SALT deduction in Trump's big bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans on Monday proposed deeper Medicaid cuts, including new work requirements for parents of teens, as a way to offset the costs of making President Donald Trump's tax breaks more permanent in draft legislation unveiled for his 'big, beautiful bill.' The proposals from Republicans keep in place the current $10,000 deduction of state and local taxes, called SALT, drawing quick blowback from GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, who fought for a $40,000 cap in the House-passed bill. Senators insisted negotiations continue. The Senate draft also enhances Trump's proposed new tax break for seniors, with a bigger $6,000 deduction for low- to moderate-income senior households earning no more than $75,000 a year for singles, $150,000 for couples. All told, the text unveiled by the Senate Finance Committee Republicans provides the most comprehensive look yet at changes the GOP senators want to make to the 1,000-page package approved by House Republicans last month. GOP leaders are pushing to fast-track the bill for a vote by Trump's Fourth of July deadline. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the chairman, said the proposal would prevent a tax hike and achieve 'significant savings' by slashing green energy funds 'and targeting waste, fraud and abuse." It comes as Americans broadly support levels of funding for popular safety net programs, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Many Americans see Medicaid and food assistance programs as underfunded. What's in the big bill, so far Trump's big bill is the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda, a hodgepodge of GOP priorities all rolled into what he calls the 'beautiful bill' that Republicans are trying to swiftly pass over unified opposition from Democrats — a tall order for the slow-moving Senate. Fundamental to the package is the extension of some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks approved during his first term, in 2017, that are expiring this year if Congress fails to act. There are also new ones, including no taxes on tips, as well as more than $1 trillion in program cuts. After the House passed its version, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the nation's deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 fewer people without health insurance, due largely to the proposed new work requirements and other changes. The biggest tax breaks, some $12,000 a year, would go to the wealthiest households, CBO said, while the poorest would see a tax hike of roughly $1,600. Middle-income households would see tax breaks of $500 to $1,000 a year, CBO said. Both the House and Senate packages are eyeing a massive $350 billion buildup of Homeland Security and Pentagon funds, including some $175 billion for Trump's mass deportation efforts, such as the hiring of 10,000 more officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. This comes as protests over deporting migrants have erupted nationwide — including the stunning handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla last week in Los Angeles — and as deficit hawks such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are questioning the vast spending on Homeland Security. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that the Senate GOP's draft 'cuts to Medicaid are deeper and more devastating than even the Republican House's disaster of a bill.' Tradeoffs in bill risk GOP support As the package now moves to the Senate, the changes to Medicaid, SALT and green energy programs are part of a series of tradeoffs GOP leaders are making as they try to push the package to passage with their slim majorities, with almost no votes to spare. But criticism of the Senate's version came quickly after House Speaker Mike Johnson warned senators off making substantial changes. 'We have been crystal clear that the SALT deal we negotiated in good faith with the Speaker and the White House must remain in the final bill,' the co-chairs of the House SALT caucus, Reps. Young Kim, R-Calif., and Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., said in a joint statement Monday. Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York posted on X that the $10,000 cap in the Senate bill was not only insulting, but a 'slap in the face to the Republican districts that delivered our majority and trifecta' with the White House. Medicaid and green energy cuts Some of the largest cost savings in the package come from the GOP plan to impose new work requirements on able-bodied single adults, ages 18 to 64 and without dependents, who receive Medicaid, the health care program used by 80 million Americans. While the House first proposed the new Medicaid work requirement, it exempted parents with dependents. The Senate's version broadens the requirement to include parents of children older than 14, as part of their effort to combat waste in the program and push personal responsibility. Already, the Republicans had proposed expanding work requirements in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, known as SNAP, to include older Americans up to age 64 and parents of school-age children older than 10. The House had imposed the requirement on parents of children older than 7. People would need to work 80 hours a month or be engaged in a community service program to qualify. One Republican, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, has joined a few others pushing to save Medicaid from steep cuts — including to the so-called provider tax that almost all states levy on hospitals as a way to help fund their programs. The Senate plan proposes phasing down that provider tax, which is now up to 6%. Starting in 2027, the Senate looks to gradually lower that threshold until it reaches 3.5% in 2031, with exceptions for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities. Hawley slammed the Senate bill's changes on the provider tax. 'This needs a lot of work. It's really concerning and I'm really surprised by it,' he said. 'Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape." The Senate also keeps in place the House's proposed new $35-per-service co-pay imposed on some Medicaid patients who earn more than the poverty line, which is about $32,000 a year for a family of four, with exceptions for some primary, prenatal, pediatric and emergency room care. And Senate Republicans are seeking a slower phase-out of some Biden-era green energy tax breaks to allow continued develop of wind, solar and other projects that the most conservative Republicans in Congress want to end more quickly. Tax breaks for electric vehicles would be immediately eliminated. Conservative Republicans say the cuts overall don't go far enough, and they oppose the bill's provision to raise the national debt limit by $5 trillion to allow more borrowing to pay the bills. "We've got a ways to go on this one,' said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. __ Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Senate Republicans seek tougher Medicaid cuts and lower SALT deduction in Trump's big bill
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Monday proposed deeper Medicaid cuts , including new work requirements for parents of teens, as a way to offset the costs of making President Donald Trump's tax breaks more permanent as they unveiled draft legislation for his 'big, beautiful bill.' The proposals from Republicans keep in place the current $10,000 deduction of state and local taxes, called SALT, drawing quick blowback from GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, who fought for a $40,000 cap in the House-passed bill. Senators insisted negotiations will continue.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Long Shadow Of Bill Clinton Over The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill'
WASHINGTON – An unexpected name kept coming up as House Republicans crafted their multi-trillion dollar legislative package slashing Medicaid and taxes for the wealthy: Bill Clinton. On the House floor, during committee hearings and in hallway interviews, several Republicans have justified their Medicaid cuts by pointing to the Democrat who served as the 42nd President of the United States. 'We are reintroducing Clinton-era work requirements,' Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) said in a floor speech this week. 'One of the most popular things Bill Clinton achieved in his presidency, and he worked with Congress to get it done, was bringing commonsense work requirements to social welfare programs.' Work requirements — better understood as benefit limits for the unemployed — are the centerpiece of Medicaid and food benefit cuts Republicans are using to offset part of the cost of tax cuts at the heart of their so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill.' Work requirements were the core of a 1996 welfare reform bill that Clinton signed into law. There is, however, little evidence work requirements actually encourage unemployed Medicaid or SNAP recipients to find jobs and lots of evidence they bombard aid recipients with paperwork, causing even some employed people to lose benefits when they can't keep up. Their return is one of several bitter pills Democrats are swallowing as the GOP advances a bill amounting to a massive redistribution of wealth from poor to rich. Just a few years ago, Democrats seemed to be escaping the 1990s politics of welfare, in which the government can help poor people only after a state-federal bureaucracy has vetted their deservingness. Now, they're watching Republicans repeatedly invoke a Democrat to justify health care coverage cuts which will result in millions of people losing health insurance and food benefits. 'I think work is really important in America and Democrats need to stand up for the value of work, and we should be encouraging work,' Robert Gordon, a former Clinton White House aide who is now a fellow at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, told HuffPost. 'But taking away people's health care and food benefits is not the way to do it, and it's a completely different animal from what was debated 30 years ago.' Republicans originally wanted the Medicaid work requirements to start in 2029 as part of a package of changes saving nearly $700 billion over a decade. Hardliners demanded the start date be moved up to December 2026, a key concession that helped the bill pass on Thursday morning. Even though the work requirements will obviously cut federal spending, Republicans say they don't count as cuts, and therefore that they are fulfilling Trump's pledge not to touch Medicaid. Under their logic, people will make their own deliberate decisions to disenroll from Medicaid because they would simply rather not document 20 hours per week of 'community engagement.' The paperwork hassle and availability of suitable work aren't part of the equation. 'Bill Clinton proposed work requirements. This isn't like some crazy conservative idea,' Rep. Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.), a moderate who vocally opposed Medicaid cuts, told HuffPost on the Capitol steps last week. (All the moderates wound up voting for the bill except for another New York Republican, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who missed the vote because he fell asleep.) 'We're restoring Medicaid for the people who rely on it, putting in requirements for people to work that can work,' Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) told HuffPost after the bill passed the House. 'That's what the Democrats used to be, right? It's kind of sad that they're so extreme. They don't want people to work.' Moreno and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are MAGA populists insistent that the Big Beautiful Bill not cut Medicaid. Even for them, work requirements don't count as cuts. 'If you can work and you're not working, you should be working. We don't want to pay people not to work,' Hawley said. The law Clinton signed rebranded the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, capping its federal costs, imposing time limits on benefits and encouraging states to shrink enrollment through a system of work requirements. Participation plummeted, and so did child poverty, prompting Clinton and others to declare the reforms a success. In later years, much of the employment gains among single mothers and poverty reduction have been attributed to the strong economy of the late 1990s. When the Great Recession came around, TANF enrollment stayed low, and scholars noted there had been a rise in cashless poverty among people who should have been eligible for assistance, but got none. Fewer than 1 million families receive TANF benefits today, making it one of the federal government's least helpful social programs. At a committee meeting this week, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) entered into the record an article describing the apparent early success of the Clinton welfare reforms. 'The welfare-to-work side under Bill Clinton was a success and we believe that this one will be as well,' Scott said. For a brief time, it seemed like welfare politics had changed. During the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans and Democrats agreed that everybody should get stimulus checks, regardless of whether they proved their deservingness through work. In 2021, Democrats seized the momentum and enacted a near-universal child benefit. For six months that year, most American parents received as much as $300 per child. Child poverty fell as the U.S. joined peer nations in recognizing the economic disadvantages facing parents. Democrats failed to make the policy permanent, however, after Sen. Joe Manchin ( refused to vote for it because he feared voters would see the money going to crackheads, i.e., the undeserving poor. One irony of the Bill Clinton name-dropping is that while Republicans may like him as a mascot for work requirements, when it comes to the federal budget, they're not following Clinton's example. In the late 1990s, a strong economy, combined with restrained spending and a higher top marginal tax rate, converted federal budget deficits into annual surpluses. Even with its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance, Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill would add an extra $2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. In a speech on Thursday before the bill passed, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called out the Clinton surplus and widening deficits under Republican presidents. 'My colleagues have the nerve to talk about fiscal responsibility,' he said. Gordon, the former White House aide from the Clinton administration, noted that the welfare reform law sought to boost workforce participation by providing flexible funds states could use to offer child care, transportation assistance and subsidized jobs. He also pointed out that the welfare reform law sought to mitigate the supposed evil of cash assistance – not in-kind benefits like health care. 'We're not talking about people saying, 'Oh, I'm not going to earn cash because I am getting it already.' Instead, it's, 'I'm not going to earn cash because I have health insurance.' It's a much weaker theory of the case, and there's a lot of evidence it is wrong.' Gordon said. Clinton, for his part, vetoed two welfare reform bills sent to his desk by a Republican Congress that he considered overly harsh on Medicaid and food stamps, as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program used to be called. Later, the former president told the journalist Jason DeParle, 'I thought there ought to be a national guarantee of health care and nutrition.'
