Dem
47
GOP
53
We have largely avoided much discussion of the budget-related sausage-making, since it really doesn't mean anything until there's some actual sausage. Yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) scheduled a vote, then canceled it, and then rescheduled it. Early in the evening, the House finally passed a "big, beautiful bill," consistent with Donald Trump's marching orders. The vote was 217-215, and broke along party lines, excepting that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats.
The House bill, which is really more like the outline of a bill, is as omnibus as it gets, rolling everything Trump wants to do (tax cuts, border enforcement, etc.) into one package. It calls for a minimum of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, with $2 trillion being the goal. It would impose a $4.5 trillion ceiling on any deficit impact, and would allocate $300 billion in additional spending for border security and defense. Finally, the bill would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
We are not accountants, and the staff mathematician is still recovering from World Bartender Day on Monday, but if Republicans cut between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in spending, and at the same time allow themselves to increase the deficit by up to $4.5 trillion, while having already accounted for the regular GOP priorities of the border and the military, then that leaves somewhere between $5.7 trillion and $6.2 trillion to spend on... something. We doubt that the plan is to lavish those funds on green technology, better prenatal care for poor women, or Kwanzaa scarves for every American. So, that pretty much leaves big, juicy tax cuts. And maybe some money to bribe Americans with a check paid for by "DOGE savings."
As we have written many times, when you start talking about trillion-dollar cuts, there's only a few paths to getting there: cutting the military budget, cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare and cutting Medicaid. The main target, at least under the current framework, is Medicaid. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, is instructed in the text of the bill to find a minimum of $880 billion in cuts. All of these numbers are presumably meant to be over 10 years. If not, $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid would mean cutting pretty much ALL federal spending on Medicaid. There are some Republican members of the House who would be OK with that, but not 217 of them.
That said, even $80-$90 billion in cuts to Medicaid, annually, would have a significant impact on the folks who rely on that program. The Democrats are well aware of that, and are preparing to pitch a fit. The blue team is undoubtedly aware of polls that reveal that more than 80% of Americans, and more than 75% of Republicans, do not want to see Medicaid cut. Given that the cuts are presumably going to fund tax cuts for rich people, the messaging pretty much writes itself. The Democrats don't have much leverage in Congress, particularly if budget reconciliation is used to pass the budget and raise the debt limit, but they have plenty of ways to get their message out there. And it should be a pretty potent message.
Of course, the budget is just vaporware, at the moment. The Senate already passed a budget bill, and it's pretty different from the House bill. So, there will have to be a conference committee that hammers out a single bill that both sides can agree on. On one hand, it won't be easy to get an updated bill through the House, given that the current one passed with no margin of error. On the other hand, most Republican members are going to recognize that this is probably their best chance to get some big portion of their priorities adopted, and also their best chance to avoid a debt-ceiling crisis in a few weeks. Plus, Trump is twisting arms with all his might. So, it could go either way. Presumably, things will become clearer sometime next week. (Z)