Latest news with #SupplementalNutritionalAssistancePrograms
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump administration pushed Senate to pass ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,' as Trump argues with Musk
President Donald Trump and his administration pulled out all the stops to urge the Senate to pass the 'big, beautiful bill.' The urgency comes as the Senate canceled its recess week and held an all-night vote-a-rama to pass Trump's massive reconciliation bill. The Senate began the marathon voting session around 9 a.m. EDT Monday and finally wrapped up voting 27 hours later. Midday Tuesday, the Senate narrowly passed the package with the help of a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance. Vance headed to the Capitol early Tuesday to see what influence he could have over the upper chamber as the July 4 deadline nears and Republican leaders scrambled to finalize key details to earn the 50 votes needed to pass the bill. Before departing the White House early Tuesday, Trump spoke to reporters and said he would be back in Washington in the afternoon to continue 'fighting for the bill.' 'I hear it's going OK,' Trump said. 'We'll move it along.' Late Sunday Trump cautioned Republican lawmakers against going 'too crazy' with the cost-cutting measures. He told reporters Tuesday there were certain things cut that were 'good,' but it's a complicated package. Despite pushback from Senate Democrats and Republicans who want to protect constituents from Medicaid and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Programs, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Trump predicted, 'in the end, we're gonna have it.' Democrats vowed to make the voting process in the Senate as painful as possible, introducing motions to reconsider the budget's contents, which took up multiple hours and resulted in the overnight voting session. Vance arrived at the Capitol to quell concerns that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., would have to pull the bill from the floor after hours of deadlock. The vice president has, in the past, proven to be an influential voice among GOP senators. He made his way to the upper chamber to see what he could do to push it over the finish line. Asked by reporters if the Senate would finish the bill some time Tuesday, Vance told reporters, 'We're going to find out.' Vance also took to social media to express support for the package. In several posts on X, he made the case for the bill, including its impact on illegal immigration. 'Pass the bill,' he wrote several times. Other administration officials also worked overtime to see that Trump's bill was passed in the upper chamber. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum appeared on Fox News's 'Jesse Watters Primetime' on Monday evening to highlight the package. 'This bill really cements not just peace abroad, but prosperity at home,' Burgum said. 'And two of the pillars of prosperity at home is the energy dominance, which is going to help, driving down inflation. Already, we got the lowest gas prices this country has seen in four years, and then, border security.' 'These are two things that President Trump ran on, and this bill delivers that for the American people,' he continued. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also appeared on 'Fox & Friends' on Tuesday morning to advocate for the package's tax cuts. 'This is a deal for working people because what we have is President Trump's 2017 tax bill, and we are overlaying that with the President's campaign promises, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the lower tax on Social Security and tax deducibility of American-made cars,' Bessent said. 'Those sound like working class tax breaks to me.' Not everyone is in support of the package, however. A former Trump administration official, Elon Musk, has continuously criticized the bill. He doubled down on his disdain for the package in several more posts on his social platform X. After departing the White House and his post at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he broke with Trump over the spending package and initiated a fiery feud with the president over the last month. Musk even floated creating a new political party in the wake of the bill's passage. Around noon on Tuesday, after many hours of voting, Senate Republicans were able to narrowly pass the package. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis, N.C., Rand Paul, Ky., and Susan Collins, Maine, voted against the bill. The final vote resulted in a 50-50 split and Vance was in the chamber to break the tie. The package will now head back to the House to quickly be reviewed by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the GOP's slim majority. If passed, it will land on Trump's desk to be signed into law ahead of his July Fourth deadline.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hunger will increase across America
A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office says 3.2 million people would lose food assistance benefits under the tax and spending bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA). Being a freelance writer, I have had my own financial ups and downs. My own experience with poverty, and with paying bills that you really lack the funds to pay, leaves me flabbergasted by the short-sightedness behind the massive budget package that passed the U.S House of Representatives. Republicans and conservatives have been calling it 'a big beautiful bill,' but New Mexico's own The Food Depot, which services nine New Mexico counties, says the only result will be even greater challenges to access food and healthcare.'The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities writes that if the bill passes unchanged, it would be the first time in the modern history of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Programs 'that the federal government would no longer ensure that the lowest-income families with children, older adults, and people with disabilities in every state have access to the food assistance they need.' Local and national groups concur. And I believe them. These organizations point out blatant inconsistencies in the bill's rationale, revealing its intent is not to lift spirits, or instill the down-on-their-luck with training and knowledge. It's to punish them. The most talked about aspects are the additional work requirements for nutritional assistance and Medicaid recipients. The revisions display a grave misunderstanding that poverty is layered, complex and full of pitfalls. Able-bodied SNAP recipients already fulfill work requirements, with exemptions for those who are taking care of children, or over age 55. The provisions in the U.S. House bill eliminate most exemptions, like a clean slate that erases all familial differences, or capabilities. The new provision—which will heavily impact New Mexico, where 61% of SNAP recipients are families with children—orders that any parent with a child over six years old will have to meet work requirements. The new requirements can easily undermine households already in tenuous situations. Obviously, people who qualify for nutritional assistance have even less ability to pay for child care. How much harm will forcing a parent to leave the house and systemically abandon a very young child do? Furthermore if the family or single parent faces a set of circumstances that leaves them unable to meet the new work requirements, what happens? The household loses its SNAP benefits. The bottom line is that this means less food for the child. The proposal promises a drastic uptick in child hunger. What kind of society snatches food from families with children? The bill would also impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, forcing them to prove they're consistently working, which is basically an excuse for additional paperwork—additional red tape in a system that is already clogged with it. The overwhelming majority of Medicaid recipients already work. A 2023 analysis found that 71% of Medicaid enrollees were in school, or employed, and a significant number of the 'unemployed' were caregivers of some kind, staying at home for the sake of sick family members. Healthcare furthermore is a human right that should be available to all Americans, regardless of income or ability to make a regular paycheck. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson cavalierly claims the bill is harmless. 'What we're talking about, again, is able-bodied workers, many of whom are refusing to work because they're gaming the system,' he stated on the Face the Nation TV show, and opined, 'There's a moral component to what we are doing.' Alas, Johnson's moral component is based on an obsessive zeal to stereotype the recipients of assistance with the lie that all people who aren't financially solvent are consequently lazy, shiftless or criminal. Like most distorted morality imposed by self-righteous groups, it's worsened by the refusal to examine the GOP''s own hypocrisy and self-interest. The 'big beautiful bill' includes a massive tax cut for the wealthy. It's a matter of cutting services to the have-nots to provide benefits for the very rich. It's a matter of kicking one group off the rolls to afford tax cuts that bolster the other. The U.S. Senate can do better than this, and should reject this ' big beautiful bill' and its contemptuous elitist morality.
