Latest news with #ObamaCare
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hawley stakes ground as chief GOP defender of Medicaid
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is staking out his spot as a populist defender of Medicaid in opposition to the steep cuts contained in the House-passed megabill to fund President Trump's domestic agenda. The senior senator from Missouri — who as the state's attorney general once signed on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act — has made his position clear: He will not support a bill that cuts Medicaid benefits. Hawley has long warned his party against Medicaid cuts; the $800 billion question is whether other senators will join him. He joined with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) during a marathon series of votes on the budget resolution in April to introduce an amendment that would have stripped the House's directive to find $880 billion in savings. The amendment was not adopted, but Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted for it. Earlier this month, Hawley wrote in a New York Times op-ed that slashing health care for the working poor 'is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.' 'Republicans need to open their eyes: Our voters support social insurance programs,' Hawley wrote. 'More than that, our voters depend on those programs.' Hawley is adamant that Republicans take President Trump seriously when he says they should not touch Medicaid benefits and instead focus on 'waste, fraud and abuse.' 'We ought to just do what the president says,' Hawley said late last week, after the House passed its version of the bill. He cited concerns about the impact the House bill's Medicaid provisions — most notably a freeze on provider taxes — would have on rural hospitals. Missouri health experts said about 10 rural hospitals closed in the years leading up to the expansion vote. Ever since, there haven't been any closures. Hawley also said he spoke with Trump, who reiterated his desire for Congress not to cut Medicaid benefits. 'His exact words were 'don't touch it, Josh.' I said hey, we're on the same page,' Hawley told reporters. In a CNN interview earlier this month, Hawley called a provision requiring increased beneficiary co-pays 'basically a hidden tax on working poor people who are trying to get healthcare.' Outside observers said Hawley hasn't suddenly become a defender of ObamaCare, but his Medicaid position reflects the changing politics of the low-income health care program. Lower-income, working-class people on Medicaid are now a major part of the GOP base, which has become more populist since the emergence of Trump. Missouri is a ruby-red state that Trump won handily in 2024, but those voters also overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure in 2020 to expand Medicaid. 'All the research shows that there are more people in rural areas on Medicaid than in urban areas. And I think [Hawley's] picked up on that. … These are his voters, and he seems to be speaking out of a populist position,' said Timothy McBride, a health economist and professor at Washington University's School of Public Health. The legislation that passed the House late last week would cut nearly $800 billion from Medicaid through a combination of provisions that include work requirements on 'able-bodied adults' through age 64 without dependents, a freeze on provider taxes, more frequent checks of people's eligibility, and reducing federal Medicaid payments to states that provide health care coverage for migrants without legal status. Congressional scorekeepers estimated the bill would result in close to 10 million people losing insurance coverage. The legislation doesn't make specific changes to the federal matching rate for Medicaid expansion, as hard-liners pushed for, but it is still designed to penalize expansion states. There are 1.3 million people receiving Medicaid benefits in Missouri, including 350,000 people covered by Medicaid expansion. Leighton Ku, a professor and director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health, estimated the state would lose about $2.4 billion in federal funding over a decade. Unless the state repeals its expansion, which can't be done without another ballot measure, Missouri will need to find some other way to pay for that coverage. 'So that's going to create hardship for Missouri, because … Missouri is otherwise a pretty red state, so they don't like doing things like raising taxes,' Ku said, meaning they'd likely have to cut other benefits. 'This is one of the things that is causing Senator Hawley some concerns.' But experts and advocates said they remain perplexed by Hawley's support for work requirements. Hawley and other GOP lawmakers argue the work requirements do not qualify as a cut to benefits. They say work requirements will make the 'able-bodied' individuals who choose not to work contribute to society. But experts say almost all beneficiaries are already working. 'The people who are typically affected [by work requirements] are not young guys playing Xbox. It tends to be middle-aged and older women,' said Ku. 'Paperwork gets in the way.' The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the work requirements would save the federal government $280 billion over six years, at the cost of millions of people losing insurance. 'I think that it's great that he is sticking up for Medicaid, that he's voicing concerns that are important to his constituents,' Christi Lero, a Medicaid ambassador for the left-leaning Missouri Rural Crisis Center, said. 'But what's also important is the method to go about protecting Medicaid. These job requirements are really just a different avenue to cut Medicaid. And we know that.' But as in the House, there are competing factions in the Senate calling for even steeper cuts to Medicaid. It's not clear how leadership will try to satisfy all camps. The House's legislation front-loads much of the savings to satisfy the conservatives. Scaling back Medicaid cuts would also upset the delicate balance that got the bill across the finish line in the House. Conservatives are already warning that they won't swallow an erosion of their hard-fought, deficit-cutting victories. Al Weaver contributed to this story. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Winners and losers as House approves Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
House Republicans on Thursday approved a massive legislative package comprising the major pieces of President Trump's domestic agenda, including tax cuts, an immigration crackdown and sharp cuts in Medicaid. The vote defied the skeptics who thought it impossible to unite the feuding factions of the House GOP behind so large a bill. And it marked a huge political victory for Trump, whose approval rating is well underwater, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has faced internal criticisms for his handling of major legislative debates since he took the gavel in 2023. Here are the winners and losers from the hard-fought debate. For a president who made campaign promises to extend tax cuts, clamp down on immigration and unleash domestic energy production, Thursday's vote marked a major victory for a simple reason: All of those policies are in the bill. But the political implications of the vote might be even more significant, demonstrating that Trump has a firm grip over even the conservative, rabble-rousing wing of the House Republican Conference, whose members have frequently defied the legislative wishes of their own GOP leaders. Indeed, ask any Republican in the Capitol who gets credit for nudging the package over the finish line and the answer is clear: President Trump. 'He's the one that's responsible for this,' Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a prominent Freedom Caucus member, said just after Thursday's vote. 'It would've never happened if he hadn't gotten involved.' After remaining largely on the sidelines during the early stages of the debate, Trump dove in head-first during the final days leading up to the vote. On Tuesday, he visited the Capitol to urge the GOP holdouts to quit their 'grandstanding' and back the bill. When that didn't work, he called members of the House Freedom Caucus to the White House on Wednesday, when he offered just enough to win the support of even the loudest critics. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was one of them. He said he was swayed to support the bill largely after GOP leaders agreed to increase incentives to states that did not expand Medicaid under ObamaCare to stay the course. That, he said, 'came out of our meeting yesterday in the White House.' Even Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of just two Republicans to vote against the package on Thursday, credited Trump's lobbying as the decisive factor in passing the bill. 'He was very persuasive,' Massie said. 'He made a decent effort at convincing me.' Heading into the week, there were plenty of skeptics saying that Johnson's push to pass the legislation through the House by Memorial Day was a pipe dream. And there were points in the debate, the Speaker conceded, when he was almost forced to agree. 'There [were] a few moments over the last week when it looked like the thing might fall apart,' Johnson said Thursday morning. Still, Johnson was relentless in his pursuit of meeting his own deadline, staging countless discussions with the two groups of holdouts — conservative spending hawks fighting for steeper Medicaid cuts and moderate blue-state Republicans vying to secure tax relief for their high-income districts — in search of an elusive deal. In the process, he made a few bold gambles. When the conservatives blocked the bill in the Budget Committee last Friday, he quickly staged a second vote on the same proposal late Sunday night, all but daring them to sink it again. (They didn't.) And when Trump's warning for both groups to drop their demands didn't bear fruit, Johnson brought both camps back to his office with new offers that ultimately helped to win their approval. 'It was a tough process, it was a competitive process, but one that resulted in everyone being able to go back to their constituencies and say they have a win,' said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), a Long Island centrist who was fighting to hike the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. The debate, for now, seems to have put Johnson in the good graces of the competing wings of his diverse conference heading into negotiations with Senate Republicans over a final version of the party's domestic agenda. The Speaker gave plenty of credit to Trump and the many committee chairs who cobbled the package together. But he also leaned heavily on divine intervention. 'There's a lot of prayer that brought this together,' Johnson said after the vote. Moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states made it clear from the start that they would go to the mat for a significant increase to the SALT deduction cap, threatening to tank the entire package if they did not get substantial relief. In the end, they held the line — and it paid off. The Trump agenda bill includes a $40,000 SALT deduction cap for individuals making $500,000 or less — quadruple the current $10,000 deduction cap adopted as part of the 2017 Trump tax law. The deduction cap and income limits would increase 1 percent per year over 10 years. The final deal came after days of intense — and sometimes contentious — negotiations between leadership and members of the SALT Caucus, with the moderate Republicans digging in on their demands, a political gamble when working with such a sprawling package. First, top lawmakers proposed a $30,000 deduction cap with a $400,000 income limit, which the group vocally rejected. The group then floated a $62,000 deduction cap for individual filers and a $124,000 deduction cap for joint filers — highlighting the gulf between the two groups. When leadership returned to the table with an offer that would decrease the deduction cap from $40,000 to $30,000 after four years, they demurred. Finally, a palatable offer arrived. The group is claiming victory, already looking to use the provision to their advantage when seeking reelection in their purple districts. LaLota, a vocal supporter of increasing the SALT cap, said he 'agreed to a number that I can sell back at home.' 'A number that makes 92 percent of my constituents completely whole,' he added. 'This is going to lead to welcome tax relief for Long Island middle-class families.' Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who is eyeing a gubernatorial bid, was pithier: 'Promises made, promises kept,' he wrote on the social platform X. Conservative spending hawks drew a sharp red line at the launch of the debate, warning that they wouldn't support a package that added to deficit spending. Then they crossed it. The package approved by the House on Thursday is estimated to increase deficits by trillions of dollars over the next decade. And while some Republicans have dismissed those projections as wildly off base, others — including some of Congress's most vocal spending hawks — are readily acknowledging that the package falls far short of their fiscal goals. 'The consequences of this bill will add to the debt, and if we don't get the bond market under control, then we're going to be paying a whole lot of money,' Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, said after the vote. 'We're already close to a trillion dollars in debt payments now. That is a real concern. It ought to be a concern of more people in Washington that this is an unsustainable path. We've got to get that under control.' Norman agreed, saying conservatives fought their best fight for more savings but in the end were forced to give in to the inertia of the massive bill. 'That's what bothers me. We just don't have the courage to handle it,' he said. 'It's going to hit, and I hate it when it hits.' Massie opposed the bill for that very reason, warning colleagues before the vote that the package is 'a debt bomb ticking.' 'I'd love to stand here and tell the American people, we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything's going to be just fine,' he said. 'But I can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose of reality.' A central feature of the Republican bill is a gutting of the green-energy agenda adopted under former President Biden. Under the proposal, tax credits offered to climate-friendly energy projects will end altogether beginning in 2029, and companies hoping to take advantage of those benefits before then will have to begin construction within 60 days of the legislation becoming law. Roy said the expedited rollback of those credits will save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars — and was a major factor in securing his vote. 'The solidification of the Inflation Reduction Act tightening … was massive,' he said. 'By that, we're constraining the hell out of wind and solar, which is good.' The GOP bill would also slash federal programs designed to fight pollution, allocate billions of dollars to the strategic petroleum reserve and eliminate a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of electric vehicles. The proposal drew howls from Democrats and environmental activists, who are warning that the effects on the climate will be far-reaching. Trump, during his visit to the Capitol, was adamant that Republicans should not touch Medicaid benefits and should focus instead on 'waste, fraud and abuse' under the low-income health care program. Conservative hard-liners, however, weren't convinced. And much of the last-minute wrangling centered on their demands to expedite the timeline for implementing new Medicaid eligibility restrictions. Those proposed changes, including new proof-of-employment requirements for certain adult beneficiaries, are estimated to cause more than 7 million people to become uninsured over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Democrats have pounced on the projections, accusing Republicans of slashing health care benefits for the poorest Americans in order to underwrite tax cuts for the wealthiest. It's unclear if the Medicaid cuts will survive in the Senate, where a handful of GOP senators — including conservative Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) — have warned that they'll oppose any package that cuts health benefits under the program. Scaling back the Medicaid cuts, however, would complicate passage when the bill returns to the House, where conservatives are already warning that they won't swallow an erosion of their hard-fought, deficit-cutting victories. 'They've got a lot they still need to do to make it better, and they can't unwind what we achieved,' Roy said. 'Those are going to be red lines. If the SALT guys think they've got red lines, just wait until you see what's coming out of us.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Winners and losers as House approves Trump's ‘big beautiful bill'
House Republicans on Thursday approved a massive legislative package comprising the major pieces of President Trump's domestic agenda, including tax cuts, an immigration crackdown and sharp cuts in Medicaid. The vote defied the skeptics who thought it impossible to unite the feuding factions of the House GOP behind so large a bill. And it marked a huge political victory for Trump, whose approval rating is well underwater, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has faced internal criticisms for his handling of major legislative debates since he took the gavel in 2023. Here are the winners and losers from the hard-fought debate. For a president who had made campaign promises to extend tax cuts, clamp down on immigration and unleash domestic energy production, Thursday's vote marked a major victory for a simple reason: All of those policies are in the bill. But the political implications of the vote might be even more significant, demonstrating that Trump has a firm grip over even the conservative, rabble-rousing wing of the House Republican conference, whose members have frequently defied the legislative wishes of their own GOP leaders. Indeed, ask any Republican in the Capitol who gets credit for nudging the package over the finish line and the answer is clear: President Trump. 'He's the one that's responsible for this,' Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a prominent Freedom Caucus member, said just after Thursday's vote. 'It would've never happened if he hadn't gotten involved.' After remaining largely on the sidelines during the early stages of the debate, Trump dove in head-first during the final days leading up to the vote. On Tuesday, he visited the Capitol to urge the GOP holdouts to quit their 'grandstanding' and back the bill. When that didn't work, he called members of the House Freedom Caucus to the White House on Wednesday, when he offered just enough to win the support of even the loudest critics. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) was one of them. He said he was swung to support the bill largely after GOP leaders agreed to increase incentives to states that did not expand Medicaid under ObamaCare to stay the course. That, he said, 'came out of our meeting yesterday in the White House.' Even Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of just two Republicans to vote against the package on Thursday, credited Trump's lobbying as the decisive factor in passing the bill. 'He was very persuasive,' Massie said. 'He made a decent effort at convincing me.' Heading into the week, there were plenty of skeptics saying that Johnson's push to pass the legislation through the House by Memorial Day was a pipe dream. And there were points in the debate, the Speaker conceded, when he was almost forced to agree. 'There [were] a few moments over the last week when it looked like the thing might fall apart,' Johnson said Thursday morning. Still, Johnson was relentless in his pursuit of meeting his own deadline, staging countless discussions with the two groups of holdouts — conservative spending hawks fighting for steeper Medicaid cuts and moderate blue-state Republicans vying to secure tax relief for their high-income districts — in search of an elusive deal. In the process, he made a few bold gambles. When the conservatives blocked the bill in the Budget Committee last Friday, he quickly staged a second vote on the same proposal late Sunday night, all but daring them to sink it again. (They didn't). And when Trump's warning for both groups to drop their demands didn't bear fruit, Johnson brought both camps back to his office with new offers that ultimately helped to win their approval. 'It was a tough process, it was a competitive process, but one that resulted in everyone being able to go back to their constituencies and say they have a win,' said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), a Long Island centrist who was fighting to hike the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. The debate, for now, seems to have put Johnson in the good graces of the competing wings of his diverse conference heading into negotiations with Senate Republicans over a final version of the party's domestic agenda. The Speaker gave plenty of credit to Trump and the many committee chairs that cobbled the package together. But he also leaned heavily on divine intervention. 'There's a lot of prayer that brought this together,' Johnson said after the vote. Moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states made it clear from the start that they would go to the mat for a significant increase to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, threatening to tank the entire package if they did not get substantial relief. In the end, they held the line — and it paid off. The Trump agenda bill includes a $40,000 SALT deduction cap for individuals making $500,000 or less — quadruple the current $10,000 deduction cap adopted as part of the 2017 Trump tax law. The deduction cap and income limits would increase 1 percent per year over 10 years. The final deal came after days of intense — and sometimes contentious — negotiations between leadership and members of the SALT Caucus, with the moderate Republicans digging in on their demands, a political gamble when working with such a sprawling package. First top lawmakers proposed a $30,000 deduction cap with a $400,000 income limit, which the group vocally rejected. The group then floated a $62,000 deduction cap for individual filers and a $124,000 deduction cap for joint filers — highlighting the gulf between the two groups. When leadership returned to the table with an offer that would decrease the deduction cap from $40,000 to $30,000 after four years, they demurred. Finally, a palatable offer arrived. The group is claiming victory, already looking to use the provision to their advantage when seeking re-election in their purple districts. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), a vocal supporter of increasing the SALT cap, said he 'agreed to a number that I can sell back at home.' 'A number that makes 92 percent of my constituents completely whole,' he added. 'This is going to lead to welcome tax relief for Long Island middle-class families.' Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who is eyeing a gubernatorial bid, was pithier: 'Promises made, promises kept,' he wrote on X. Conservative spending hawks drew a sharp red line at the launch of the debate, warning that they wouldn't support a package that added to deficit spending. Then they crossed it. The package approved by the House on Thursday is estimated to increase deficits by trillions of dollars over the next decade. And while some Republicans have dismissed those projections as wildly off-base, others — including some of Congress's most vocal spending hawks — are readily acknowledging that the package falls far short of their fiscal goals. 'The consequences of this bill will add to the debt, and if we don't get the bond market under control, then we're going to be paying a whole lot of money,' Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member, said after the vote. 'We're already close to a trillion dollars in debt payments now,' he added. 'That is a real concern. It ought to be a concern of more people in Washington that this is an unsustainable path. We've got to get that under control.' Norman agreed, saying conservatives fought their best fight for more savings, but in the end were forced to give in to the inertia of the massive bill. 'That's what bothers me. We just don't have the courage to handle it,' he said. 'It's going to hit, and I hate it when it hits.' Massie opposed the bill for that very reason, warning colleagues before the vote that the package is 'a debt bomb ticking.' 'I'd love to stand here and tell the American people, we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything's going to be just fine,' he said. 'But I can't do that because I'm here to deliver a dose of reality.' A central feature of the Republican bill is a gutting of the green-energy agenda adopted under former President Biden. Under the proposal, tax credits offered to climate-friendly energy projects will end altogether beginning in 2029, and companies hoping to avail those benefits before then will have to begin construction within 60 days of the legislation becoming law. Roy said the expedited roll-back of those credits will save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars — and was a major factor in securing his vote. 'The solidification of the Inflation Reduction Act tightening … was massive,' he said. 'By that, we're constraining the hell out of wind and solar, which is good.' The GOP bill would also slash federal programs designed to fight pollution, allocate billions of dollars to the strategic petroleum reserve and eliminate a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of electric vehicles. The proposal drew howls from Democrats and environmental activists, who are warning that the effects on the climate will be far-reaching. Trump, during his visit to the Capitol, was adamant that Republicans should not touch Medicaid benefits, but focus instead on 'waste, fraud and abuse' under the low-income health care program. Conservative hardliners, however, weren't convinced. And much of the last-minute wrangling centered around their demands to expedite the timeline for implementing new Medicaid eligibility restrictions. Those proposed changes, including new proof-of-employment requirements for certain adult beneficiaries, are estimated to cause more than 7 million people to become uninsured over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Democrats have pounced on the projections, accusing Republicans of slashing health care benefits for the poorest Americans in order to underwrite tax cuts for the wealthiest. It's unclear if the Medicaid cuts will survive in the Senate, where a handful of GOP senators — including conservative Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) — have warned that they'll oppose any package that cuts health benefits under the program. Scaling back the Medicaid cuts, however, would complicate passage when the bill returns to the House, where conservatives are already warning that they won't swallow an erosion of their hard-fought, deficit-cutting victories. 'They've got a lot they still need to do to make it better, and they can't unwind what we achieved,' Roy said. 'Those are going to be red lines. If the SALT guys think they've got red lines, just wait until you see what's coming out of us.'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Freedom Caucus chair predicts ‘big beautiful bill' lacks support to pass this week
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, is predicting that the legislative package at the heart of President Trump's domestic agenda doesn't have the support to pass through the House this week. 'I think it's pretty obvious that they're going to need more time,' Harris told reporters Monday evening outside the Capitol. 'These are complicated discussions. These are complicated issues. These are trillions of dollars,' he added. 'We've got to do this thing right.' Harris's timeline contradicts that of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team, who are racing to unite their disparate conference behind the massive package of tax cuts, health policy changes, tougher immigration rules and a shift away from green energy. Johnson said Monday that he's confident the bill can pass through the lower chamber this week. Among the remaining sticking points, conservatives are staging an 11th-hour push to slash Medicaid payments for adults newly eligible for the program under ObamaCare — an idea opposed by many moderate Republicans. Harris acknowledged the difficulty of the issue and said the negotiation surrounding it 'is going to have to go on for a while.' 'The federal government spends more on healthy people than they do on the traditional Medicaid population,' Harris said. A short time later, Johnson said leaders are not considering changes to the Medicaid payment formula — known as the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) — as they seek more budget savings. 'FMAP has not been on the table, no,' Johnson told reporters Monday night. 'It's been off the table for quite some time.' Harris also denounced the increase in deficit spending under the bill — a figure he put at $1 trillion over the next five years — saying the deficit impact alone will prompt enough conservative opposition to sink the legislation unless leadership alters the bill to bring that figure down. The sides are far enough apart, he said, to require negotiations through next week's Memorial Day recess. 'I think it can be hammered out over the Memorial Day break. That's enough time,' Harris said. 'I think we made some progress in the last few days, and gauging the speed of that progress, I think in 10 days we could have [it done].' In the meantime, he added, he's opposed to the package. A wildcard in the debate remains Trump, who has stood largely on the sidelines throughout the early stages of the internal GOP debate, but is diving in head-first on Tuesday morning when he visits the Capitol to huddle with the House GOP conference. Trump, who retains enormous popularity among the Republican base, has held enormous sway in debates of the past. Harris, however, said he's ready to stand firm against the current legislation, even if the president presses him to get on board. 'He has said he wants to solve the budget deficit. I would make the case that this big beautiful bill could get more beautiful with a little more work,' Harris said. 'I'm glad he's coming to talk to the conference. I always welcome the president,' he continued. 'But I'm not sure there's anything that he can say tomorrow that's going to change the minds of people who do believe that this bill needs more work.' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another conservative holdout, piled on, saying Johnson's self-imposed Memorial Day deadline is not real at all, since there are no actually policy repercussions if it's missed. 'It's arbitrary and it's pressure and it's just like Christmas and Easter,' Roy said. 'But it's the way this town works.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Freedom Caucus chair predicts ‘big beautiful bill' lacks support to pass this week
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, is predicting that the legislative package at the heart of President Trump's domestic agenda doesn't have the support to pass through the House this week. 'I think it's pretty obvious that they're going to need more time,' Harris told reporters Monday evening outside the Capitol. 'These are complicated discussions. These are complicated issues. These are trillions of dollars,' he added. 'We've got to do this thing right.' Harris's timeline contradicts that of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team, who are racing to unite their disparate conference behind the massive package of tax cuts, health policy changes, tougher immigration rules and a shift away from green energy. Johnson said Monday that he's confident the bill can pass through the lower chamber this week. Among the remaining sticking points, conservatives are staging an 11th-hour push to slash Medicaid payments for adults newly eligible for the program under ObamaCare — an idea opposed by many moderate Republicans. Harris acknowledged the difficulty of the issue and said the negotiation surrounding it 'is going to have to go on for a while.' 'The federal government spends more on healthy people than they do on the traditional Medicaid population,' Harris said. A short time later, Johnson said leaders are not considering changes to the Medicaid payment formula — known as the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) — as they seek more budget savings. 'FMAP has not been on the table, no,' Johnson told reporters Monday night. 'It's been off the table for quite some time.' Harris also denounced the increase in deficit spending under the bill — a figure he put at $1 trillion over the next five years — saying the deficit impact alone will prompt enough conservative opposition to sink the legislation unless leadership alters the bill to bring that figure down. The sides are far enough apart, he said, to require negotiations through next week's Memorial Day recess. 'I think it can be hammered out over the Memorial Day break. That's enough time,' Harris said. 'I think we made some progress in the last few days, and gauging the speed of that progress, I think in 10 days we could have [it done].' In the meantime, he added, he's opposed to the package. A wildcard in the debate remains Trump, who has stood largely on the sidelines throughout the early stages of the internal GOP debate, but is diving in head-first on Tuesday morning when he visits the Capitol to huddle with the House GOP conference. Trump, who retains enormous popularity among the Republican base, has held enormous sway in debates of the past. Harris, however, said he's ready to stand firm against the current legislation, even if the president presses him to get on board. 'He has said he wants to solve the budget deficit. I would make the case that this big beautiful bill could get more beautiful with a little more work,' Harris said. 'I'm glad he's coming to talk to the conference. I always welcome the president,' he continued. 'But I'm not sure there's anything that he can say tomorrow that's going to change the minds of people who do believe that this bill needs more work.' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another conservative holdout, piled on, saying Johnson's self-imposed Memorial Day deadline is not real at all, since there are no actually policy repercussions if it's missed. 'It's arbitrary and it's pressure and it's just like Christmas and Easter,' Roy said. 'But it's the way this town works.'
