As June got underway, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scrutinized the House Republicans’ megabill — the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act — and came to some brutal conclusions. As key GOP officials insisted that no American would lose health care coverage as a result of the far-right legislation, the CBO concluded that more than 10 million Americans would be stripped of their health security if the bill became law.
The good news was that Senate Republicans had an opportunity to make the party’s reconciliation package better. But as June comes to an end, the bad news is that GOP lawmakers in the upper chamber appear to have made it worse. The New York Times reported:
Republicans’ marquee domestic policy bill that is making its way through the Senate would result in deeper cuts and more Americans losing health insurance coverage than the original measure that passed the House last month, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. According to a report published late Saturday night, the legislation would mean 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than $1.1 trillion over that period — with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
When was the last time a major American political party even proposed cutting more than $1 trillion in federal health care spending? Never. It’s literally never happened.
What’s more, as The Washington Post reported, millions of low-income Americans would similarly lose food assistance if the legislation is implemented, according to the CBO’s analysis.
But Trump-era Republicans have a bunch of tax breaks for the wealthy they need to try to pay for, and this is what they’ve come up with. (Note, these health care cuts might yet get even worse by way of proposed amendments to the Senate version that have not yet been voted on.)
As for the projected impact on the national debt, the CBO initially concluded that the House version would add $2.4 trillion to upcoming deficits, but the budget office’s new score on the Senate bill now shows $3.3 trillion in budget shortfalls.
“This is the biggest debt increase in U.S. history,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in response to the findings. “All so the ultra-rich and big corporations can cash in, while millions of Americans lose health care, food assistance, and jobs.”
The New York Democrat added, “This bill is nothing but a stickup: Working families get robbed, billionaires get paid.” But wait, there’s more: A related report from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also alerted lawmakers to the fact that the tax cut provisions in the Senate bill now have a $4.45 trillion price tag, which is also worse than the JCT score of the House bill. Confronted with evidence like this, common sense might suggest that congressional Republicans would pause, reassess, and perhaps even hold a hearing or two about the real-world implications of their own far-right proposal. But none of that is going to happen: Senate GOP leaders are still barreling toward a floor vote with as little debate and consideration as possible, all in the hopes of meeting Donald Trump’s arbitrary and self-imposed July 4 deadline. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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