Latest news with #fiscalconservatives
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's tax bill has a long way to go in the Senate as Republicans mull major changes
Republican leaders spent months carefully crafting the 1,038-page megabill advancing President Donald Trump's agenda, engaging in grueling negotiations and backroom dealings to unite competing GOP factions just enough to squeeze the package through the House. Now, several of those provisions that ensured its passage could be on the chopping block. The Senate is set to begin consideration of Trump's 'big beautiful bill' as Republican leaders scramble to finalize the massive budget framework before the Fourth of July. But Republican senators — including Utah Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis — are unsure about some of the contents, warning some provisions go too far while others don't go far enough to reduce the nation's deficit. 'There are solid victories in the bill,' Lee said in a statement to the Deseret News. 'But in its current form, the (Big Beautiful Bill Act) won't pass the Senate. It simply doesn't do enough to address the government's spending crisis. But we can make it better.' One of the most controversial provisions tucked into the budget resolution is language repealing clean energy tax credits that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration with only Democratic support. That language was demanded by a group of fiscal conservatives in the House who threatened to vote against the full package if it was not included. However, some Republicans have been wary to fully repeal the green energy tax incentives, arguing it could raise utility costs for all Americans. Curtis is among those pushing to preserve some of those clean energy policies, particularly those dealing with nuclear energy, net-zero emissions, battery storage and more. The first-term senator has long centered his climate policies on clean energy solutions, suggesting earlier this week he will push for those changes as the Senate considers the bill. 'My friends in the House kind of called me up to say, 'Listen, we're counting on you to fix it,'' Curtis said at an event in Tooele last week. 'So I think even many of them knew that what they sent over did need some work, and that's now our job in the Senate to put our stamp on that and have it speak for our will.' 'And I think if I have anything to say about it,' he added, 'I'll make sure that we're taking into account our energy future.' On the other hand, Lee has previously suggested he wants a comprehensive repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, telling the Deseret News it should be overhauled 'lock, stock, and barrel.' 'There are some simple ways we can improve the bill,' Lee said. One way is to 'end Biden's politically motivated subsidies under the so-called 'Inflation Reduction Act' and end the Green New Scam once and for all.' While the two Utah senators have competing visions for the future of green energy tax credits, the pair have similar views on how to address proposals paring back government spending to reduce the deficit. Both Curtis and Lee have pushed for deeper spending cuts and reforms to certain government programs. While Republicans have vowed not to slash necessary benefits under Medicaid and other welfare programs, Curtis has repeatedly urged lawmakers to engage in conversations about reining in fraudulent spending. If not, the senator has warned, drastic cuts will be necessary in the future. Lee has also been vocal about searching for deeper spending cuts in the budget framework, arguing it does not go far enough to reduce the deficit. Those calls have been echoed by some fiscal hawks in the House, who say they are counting on the Senate to implement deeper spending cuts they couldn't secure with their slim majority. Another key deal that was made in the reconciliation package is an expansion of federal deductions for state and local taxes paid, also known as SALT. That provision was demanded by blue-state Republicans who threatened tanking the package if it wasn't included. Republican leaders offered to increase the current deduction cap to $40,000 — up from the current $10,000 limit — for individuals who make $500,000 or less a year. That cap would then increase by 1% every year over the next decade and remain permanent after that period. However, that increase may not be met with open arms in the Senate — and Lee is already hinting at its removal. 'Right now, it unfortunately contains big SALT cap increases, which are basically subsidies for high-tax blue states paid for by hardworking families in Utah and the rest of the country,' Lee said. Another provision that could find itself on the cutting room floor: a debt ceiling increase. The debt limit is the total amount of money the federal government is authorized to borrow in order to pay off existing obligations, tax refunds, interest on the national debt and other payments, according to the Treasury Department. House Republicans tucked a $4 trillion debt ceiling increase into the budget resolution to avoid a default later this summer, arguing that by doing so, they would strip Democrats of the chance to use the impending deadline as leverage to attach some of their own policies. However, some Republicans are staunchly opposed to a debt limit increase in any fashion. 'I think the problem for conservatives is they lose their high moral ground. These will be their deficits,' said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is currently opposed to the package. 'These will be GOP spending bills, GOP deficits, and there is no change in the direction of the country.' House GOP leaders are pleading with their counterparts in the Senate not to make changes to the massive reconciliation package, warning any edits could tank the megabill before it even makes it to Trump's desk. Meanwhile, the president is telling the Senate to 'make the changes they want' — sending mixed messages as Republicans consider alterations to the budget framework advancing policies on the border, energy, national defense and tax reform. Some of the hard-to-convince lawmakers hope their stubbornness will ward off any of their Senate colleagues from making drastic changes, noting the drawn-out process in the House should deter them from doing so. 'I think after seeing how painful of a process this is and how difficult it is to get anything through this side, I think that will send a strong message in the Senate that you can't really change it,' Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., a member of the Freedom Caucus, told the Deseret News.
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Fiscal Hawks in Senate Balk at House's Bill to Deliver Trump's Agenda
Two of the Senate's staunchest fiscal conservatives said on Sunday that they would try to force significant changes to the bill passed by the House last week to deliver President Trump's domestic agenda, signaling a precarious path ahead for the legislation. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said on CNN that he saw the party-line process of budget reconciliation as 'our only chance' to reset to 'a reasonable prepandemic level of spending.' Mr. Johnson accused the House of rushing through the process of putting the bill together and of approving legislation that would ultimately add to the deficit. And he suggested that enough of his colleagues in the Senate felt the same way to be able to enact major changes. 'I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,' Mr. Johnson said. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, another fiscal conservative, criticized the House package, saying on Fox News that it lacked concrete measures to reduce the ballooning national debt. He said that the package was 'not a serious proposal,' and that Republicans should cut deeper into major drivers of the debt, including Medicaid, Social Security and food assistance programs. 'Somebody has to stand up and yell: 'The emperor has no clothes,'' Mr. Paul said. 'Conservatives do need to stand up and have their voice heard.' Their resistance is unwelcome news for Mr. Trump, who has implored lawmakers to quickly pass the legislation carrying his agenda, and for House Speaker Mike Johnson. Last week he attended a closed-door luncheon of Republican senators and urged them not to make drastic changes to the legislation that could imperil its passage through the House. Some of the budget hawks in the House who lent their support to their chamber's bill already swallowed considerable reservations about the bill to vote 'yes.' Mr. Johnson has warned that any major changes could put their support in jeopardy. 'We've got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House,' Mr. Johnson said on CNN on Sunday. 'And I have a very delicate balance here, a very delicate equilibrium that we've reached over a long period of time. It's best not to meddle with it too much.' A number of Republicans have also said they believe the House bill could cut too deeply into programs their constituents rely on, including Medicaid and some of the clean energy tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration's signature climate law passed in 2022. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, has become a vocal opponent of the legislation's provision on Medicaid, and has argued that the bill would harm 'working people and their children.' 'Over 20 percent of Missourians, including hundreds of thousands of children, are on Medicaid,' Mr. Hawley said on CNN earlier in May. 'They're not on Medicaid because they want to be. They're on Medicaid because they cannot afford health insurance in the private market.'
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Don't be fooled. Trump's ‘One Big Beautiful Bill' is typically ugly and typically misnamed
What's big, beautiful and kept a lot of Republicans up late on Sunday night? There might be various responses to that question, but the answer I'm looking for is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Coming in at 1,116 pages, the bill isn't quite War and Peace but it's definitely big. Whether the mega-package of tax breaks and spending cuts is beautiful, however, is up for debate. And there has certainly been a lot of debate. The bill has been in limbo for a while because a few Republicans who consider themselves 'fiscally conservative' are happy with the package's extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts and increased spending for the military and immigration enforcement, but don't think enough social and climate-related programmes have been slashed to pay for it all. In particular, they want deeper cuts to food stamps and Medicaid, which is a government programme providing health care to low-income people. Late on Sunday, however, in an unusual weekend vote, the hardliners relented a little and the House Budget Committee revived the bill. It still faces some challenges, but it is now closer to becoming law. If you are in a masochistic mood you can read all 1,116 pages of the bill. But the TLDR is that a more accurate name for the package would be the Screw Poor People and Make the Rich Richer Act. Or the Kick Millions Off Medicaid So a Billionaire Can Buy Another Yacht Act. This isn't to say that every single element of the package is bad. There is one part, for example, where children under eight are given $1,000 for 'Money Accounts for Growth and Investment', AKA 'Maga' savings accounts. In general, though, it's pretty on-brand for Republicans. The deceitful name is on-brand too. The right is very cunning when it comes to legislative framing: it loves hiding nasty intentions behind noble-sounding names that are difficult to argue with. Emotive words such as 'protect' tend to come up a lot. If a bill has 'protect' and 'women' in its name, you can be sure it's not about protecting women, but about bullying transgender people. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 (which was blocked by Democrats in the Senate in March), for example, focused on banning transgender athletes from women's sports. As the National Education Association said at the time, however, it 'does nothing to promote equity in resources, funding, or opportunity, or to tackle the sexual abuses of athletes and subsequent cover-ups that have occurred in women's sports'. Another thing Republicans love to do is to pass entirely unnecessary bills with highly emotive names, in order to amplify misleading information. Take, for example, the rightwing lie (repeatedly amplified by Trump) that Democrats want to execute newborn babies. This is obviously nonsense – infanticide is very much illegal in the US – and is a willful misinterpretation of the fact that doctors may sometimes give palliative care to dying babies. This didn't stop cynical lawmakers from coming up with the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (a bill that has gone through a number of iterations but was passed by House Republicans earlier this year) requiring doctors to provide care for children born alive during an attempted abortion. Again, there are already laws in place that cover this. The bill was completely unnecessary but it gave Republicans a great opportunity to conflate abortion and infanticide. 'Tragically, House Democrats opposed the bill, voted for infanticide, and opted to deny medical care to crying newborns on operating tables struggling to live,' Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said after most Democrats voted against the legislation. Republicans have always understood how to use language to manipulate people far better than the Democrats. You may have forgotten the name Newt Gingrich but the former Republican House Speaker has been an integral part in the rise of Trumpism and the current culture wars. Back in 1990 his political action committee distributed a pamphlet called 'Language: A Key Mechanism of Control' that instructed Republican candidates to learn to 'speak like Newt'. Gingrich was very keen on exploiting emotive language and saying outlandish things that would make headlines and get the media inadvertently amplifying a preferred narrative. The Republican party may now be full of toadies – but you can't deny they're all fluent in Newt. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
