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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Business
- Yahoo
One Big Back Breaker: Trump law to COST millions their healthcare and add $3T in debt while rich see tax cuts
President Donald Trump's signature law will simultaneously cause 10 million people to lose their healthcare while at the same time causing the nation's deficit to skyrocket, due to the fact it also includes massive tax cuts for the wealthy, a new analysis has found. The Congressional Budget Office released its official analysis this week, which showed that between 2025 and 2034, spending would be reduced by $1.1 trillion and cause the deficit to blow up by $3.4 trillion. The legislation would cause 10 million people to lose their health insurance, though the review of Trump's 'One Big Beautiful' law did not differentiate between how many people would lose coverage because of cuts to Medicaid versus changes to the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obama Care, the health care coverage-for-all law signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. 'It simultaneously hurts the poorest Americans while nonetheless increasing the deficit,' Bobby Kogan, the senior director for federal budget policy at the liberal Center for America Progress, told The Independent. 'It's actually almost unheard of to see something that cuts spending while doing tax cuts at the same time, right? Because you didn't have that juxtaposition of taking from the poor while giving to the rich.' That number is slightly lower than the almost 11 million people who would have lost health insurance under the version the House of Representatives passed in May. Senate Republicans ultimately needed to change parts of the legislation to comply with the rules of budget reconciliation, which allowed them to pass the bill with a simple majority as long as it related to federal spending. Kogan, who previously worked in the Biden administration and for the Senate Budget Committee, said that the legislation has not only the biggest cuts to Medicaid in history, but also the biggest cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, in history. At the same time, it also reduces federal revenue by $1.1 trillion by virtue of not only extending the 2017 tax cuts that Trump signed during his first term in the White House, but also includes additional tax breaks, including a temporary break for tips and overtime pay, as well as an additional $6,000 deduction for low-income seniors. And that's by design. In the earlier iterations of the House of Representatives's budget resolution, Republicans needed to find steep spending cuts in order to extend the tax cuts. The Senate passed the legislation with all but three Republican senators supporting it, but because of the strict rules of budget reconciliation, Republicans could not touch Social Security, and Trump had pledged not to touch Medicare, leaving Medicaid and SNAP as the biggest pots of money from which to slash. The legislation mostly enacts health care changes through Medicaid, namely through requiring able-bodied adults without dependent children to work and by capping the level at which states tax health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes. But the bill also makes slight changes to the Affordable Care Act. Specifically, Emma Wager, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan KFF, said that people with income below a certain level could previously enroll in the ACA's insurance marketplace in a special enrollment period. 'You now cannot receive any premium subsidies if you enroll during a special enrollment period that's income-based,' she told The Independent. 'Which, if you have a low enough income to enroll in that income based special enrollment period, you absolutely will need subsidies to help you pay for Your coverage. So that is a virtual ending of the income based special enrollment periods.' But the legislation also makes additional changes to SNAP. Specifically, it says that parents of dependent children have to work and lowers the age of dependent children from 18 to 14. In addition, it would require that states shoulder a larger share of the cost depending on the error rate for payments. Altogether, the CBO found that in the course of the next decade, SNAP would see a $187 billion cut. And there are signs that Americans are dissatisfied with the results of the legislation. A CBS News poll showed that 47 percent of those polled believe that the bill will hurt them or their family while 28 percent say it will have no effect. Only 25 percent of adults believe that it will benefit them.
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Health
- Miami Herald
Cuts to food benefits stand in the way of RFK Jr.'s goals for a healthier national diet
ALBANY, Ga. - Belinda McLoyd has been thinking about peanut butter. McLoyd, 64, receives a small monthly payment through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. 'They don't give you that much to work with,' she said. To fit her tight budget, she eats ramen noodles - high on sodium and low on nutrition - multiple times a week. If she had more money, said McLoyd, who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and heart problems, she'd buy more grapes, melons, chuck roast, ground turkey, cabbage, and turnip greens. That's what she did when lawmakers nearly doubled her SNAP benefit during the pandemic. But now that a GOP-led Congress has approved $186 billion in cuts to the food assistance program through 2034, McLoyd, who worked in retail until she retired in 2016, isn't sure how she will be able to eat any healthy food if her benefits get reduced again. McLoyd said her only hope for healthy eating might be to resort to peanut butter, which she heard 'has everything' in it. 'I get whatever I can get,' said McLoyd, who uses a walker to get around her senior community in southwestern Georgia. 'I try to eat healthy, but some things I can't, because I don't have enough money to take care of that.' The second Trump administration has said that healthy eating is a priority. It released a 'Make America Healthy Again' report citing poor diet as a cause of childhood illnesses and chronic diseases. And it's allowing states - including Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah - to limit purchases of unhealthy food with federal SNAP benefits for the first time in the history of the century-old anti-hunger program. President Donald Trump also signed a tax and spending law on July 4 that will shift costs to states and make it harder for people to qualify for SNAP by expanding existing work requirements. The bill cuts about 20% of SNAP's budget, the deepest cut the program has faced. About 40 million people now receive SNAP payments, but 3 million of them will lose their nutrition assistance completely, and millions more will see their benefits reduced, according to an analysis of an earlier version of the bill by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Researchers say SNAP cuts run counter to efforts to help people prevent chronic illness through healthy food. 'People are going to have to rely on cheaper food, which we know is more likely to be processed, less healthy,' said Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. 'It's, 'Oh, we care about health - but for the rich people,'' she said. About 47 million people lived in households with limited or uncertain access to food in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency's research shows that people living in food-insecure households are more likely to develop hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Trump administration counters that the funding cuts would not harm people who receive benefits. 'This is total fearmongering,' said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly in an email. 'The bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP for those who need it by implementing cost-sharing measures with states and commonsense work requirements.' McLoyd and other residents in Georgia's Dougherty County, where Albany is located, already face steep barriers to accessing healthy food, from tight budgets and high rates of poverty to a lack of grocery stores and transportation, said Tiffany Terrell, who founded A Better Way Grocers in 2017 to bring fresh food to people who can't travel to a grocery store. More than a third of residents receive SNAP benefits in the rural, majority-Black county that W.E.B. Du Bois described as 'the heart of the Black Belt' and a place 'of curiously mingled hope and pain,' where people struggled to get ahead in a land of former cotton plantations, in his 1903 book, 'The Souls of Black Folk.' Terrell said that a healthier diet could mitigate many of the illnesses she sees in her community. In 2017, she replaced school bus seats with shelves stocked with fruits, vegetables, meats, and eggs and drove her mobile grocery store around to senior communities, public housing developments, and rural areas. But cuts to food assistance will devastate the region, setting back efforts to help residents boost their diet with fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious food and tackle chronic disease, she said. Terrell saw how SNAP recipients like McLoyd ate healthier when food assistance rose during the pandemic. They got eggs, instead of ramen noodles, and fresh meat and produce, instead of canned sausages. Starting in 2020, SNAP recipients received extra pandemic assistance, which corresponded to a 9% decrease in people saying there was sometimes or often not enough food to eat, according to the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Once those payments ended in 2023, more families had trouble purchasing enough food, according to a study published in Health Affairs in October. Non-Hispanic Black families, in particular, saw an increase in anxiety, the study found. 'We know that even short periods of food insecurity for kids can really significantly harm their long-term health and cognitive development,' said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst on the food assistance team at the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. Cuts to SNAP 'will put a healthy diet even farther out of reach for these families.' The Trump administration said it's boosting healthy eating for low-income Americans through restrictions on what they can buy with SNAP benefits. It has begun approving state requests to limit the purchase of soda and candy with SNAP benefits. 'Thank you to the governors of Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska for their bold leadership and unwavering commitment to Make America Healthy Again,' said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a press release about the requests. 'I call on every governor in the nation to submit a SNAP waiver to eliminate sugary drinks - taxpayer dollars should never bankroll products that fuel the chronic disease epidemic.' Although states have asked for such restrictions in the past, previous administrations, including the first Trump administration, never approved them. Research shows that programs encouraging people to buy healthy food are more effective than regulating what they can buy. Such limits increase stigma on families that receive benefits, are burdensome to retailers, and often difficult to implement, researchers say. 'People make incredibly tough choices to survive,' said Gina Plata-Nino, the deputy director of SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, and a former senior policy adviser in the Biden administration. 'It's not about soda and candy,' she said. 'It's about access.' Terrell said she is unsure how people will survive if their food benefits are further trimmed. 'What are we thinking people are going to do?' said Terrell of A Better Way Grocers, who also opened a bustling community market last year that sells fresh juices, smoothies, and wellness shots in downtown Albany. 'We'll have people choosing between food and bills.' That's true for Stephen Harrison, 22, whose monthly SNAP benefit supports him, along with his parents and younger brother. During the pandemic, he used the extra assistance to buy strawberries and grapes, but now he comes into A Better Way Grocers to buy an orange when he can. Harrison, who is studying culinary arts at Albany Technical College, said his family budgets carefully to afford meals like pork chops with cornbread and collard greens, but he said that, if his benefits are cut, the family will have to resort to cheaper foods. 'I'd buy hot dogs,' he said with a shrug. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Bloomberg
9 hours ago
- Health
- Bloomberg
The Quiet Obamacare Overhaul Needs a Loud Reveal
The unprecedented cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump's tax bill rightfully garnered headlines in recent months. After all, the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office predict some 10 million people eventually will lose their public insurance. But attention now should turn to the less visible ways his policies are undermining the Affordable Care Act.
Fibre2Fashion
a day ago
- Business
- Fibre2Fashion
Trump's OBBBA to add $3.39 trn to primary debt from 2025 to 2034: CBO
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law on July 4, would add $3.39 trillion to the US primary debt between 2025 and 2034, according to a recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The latest CBO estimate is higher than its estimate of $3.25 trillion made at the end of June. The increase is estimated to result from a decrease in direct spending of $1.1 trillion and a decrease in revenues of $4.5 trillion, CBO said. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $3.39 trillion to the US primary debt between 2025 and 2034, a report by the Congressional Budget Office said. The latest CBO estimate is higher than its estimate of $3.25 trillion made at the end of June. With interest, the tax and budget act would increase borrowing by an estimated $4.1 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. With interest, the tax and budget act would increase borrowing by an estimated $4.1 trillion, according to Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "It's still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4 trillion to the debt. Many supporters of this law have spent months or years appropriately fuming about our unsustainable fiscal situation. But when they actually had an opportunity to fix it, they instead made it $4 trillion worse," said MacGuineas in a statement. 'Modelers from across the ideological spectrum universally agree that any sustained economic benefits are likely to be modest, or negative, and not one serious estimate claims this bill will improve our financial situation,' she said. As of mid-2025, the US national debt stands at over $36.2 trillion, and the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio has exceeded its peak during World War II. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law after weeks of debate among congressional Republicans. The bill passed the Senate 51-50 before it passed the House of Representatives 218-214. Democrats have universally criticised the bill. Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Donald Trump considering tax break that would impact housing market
"We are thinking about no tax on capital gains on houses," Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with the president of the Philippines. Trump, a wealthy real estate developer who has extensive property holdings, didn't go into details about his proposal, and the White House didn't immediately respond to questions. Trump on July 4 signed a measure that extends his 2017 tax cuts and includes new tax breaks, including on tipped wages, overtime pay and car loans. The law also slashes spending on the Medicaid health insurance program for lower income Americans and lifts the nation's looming debt ceiling. The measure is expected to increase the federal debt by $3.4 trillion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Trump can't turn his suggestion for the housing market into reality by himself: cutting the tax on home sales would require additional legislation. The move also comes as the president has long pushed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. "If the Fed would lower rates, we wouldn't have to do that," Trump said of the potential home sales tax cut. In general, the Fed cuts interest rates to stimulate a flagging economy and job market. It increases interest rates - or keeps them higher for longer - to lower inflation or prevent a spike in prices. Powell warned in April about the impact of Trump's tariffs on inflation, telling the Economic Club of Chicago that "Unemployment is likely to go up as the economy slows, in all likelihood, and inflation is likely to go up as tariffs find their way and some part of those tariffs come to be paid by the public." Contributing: Paul Davidson
