The Senate's version of President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill Act" passed the House of Representatives Thursday on a 218-214 vote Thursday, and Trump is expected to sign it into law on Friday at 5 PM Eastern Time. But one expert says Republicans' political headache has just begun.
One of the most notable items in the bill is its cutting of federal support for Medicaid (the program that provides health insurance for low-income and disabled Americans) by more than $1 trillion over 10 years, in order to pay for a 10-year extension of tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill could throw nearly 12 million people off of their health insurance over the next decade. The bill also cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), which millions of low-income Americans rely on to afford groceries.
In a recent article for Politico, Chris Howard — a professor of government and public policy at the University of William & Mary in Virginia — predicted that Democrats will likely find a reliable line of attack on Republican members of Congress by specifically focusing on the Medicaid and SNAP cuts.
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"The combination of these deep cuts to food and health care, which most people strongly believe are important kinds of benefits, and the tax cuts for the rich — it’s going to be very easy for Democrats to portray Republicans as the sort of heartless friends of the rich," Howard said.
Howard also noted that Medicaid is the most enticing of the three third rails of American politics to focus on (with the other two being Medicare and Social Security). And he observed that because most federal spending is on mandatory programs like those three (as opposed to discretionary spending throughout other federal agencies), Republicans likely saw Medicaid as the least politically costly program to cut.
"Social Security and Medicare also clearly have a beneficiary group of elderly who are politically active, but Medicaid is politically easier to go after because you’re talking about kids and poor people and people with disabilities," he said.
The Medicaid cuts are expected to cause particular harm to rural communities, with senators recently identifying more than 300 rural hospitals that are at risk of closure due to their primary clientele consisting of Medicaid beneficiaries. Already one Nebraska health clinic has shuttered, blaming the Medicaid cuts in Trump's budget bill.
Click here to read Politico's full article.