Senate Tax Bill Targeting Medicaid Heads to House
The unprecedented slashing of Medicaid will help fund more than $3 trillion in new tax cuts, meant to replace expiring cuts passed by Republicans in 2017. The majority of those renewed cuts will go to America's richest. Passage of the full Republican package, which now goes back to the House, also likely means that over the next decade the US will surpass $40 trillion in national debt.
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The Hill
4 minutes ago
- The Hill
House GOP leaders delay key vote on Trump megabill as opposition, attendance issues remain
House Republican leaders are delaying a key vote on the 'big, beautiful bill' as top lawmakers work to lock down enough support to clear the procedural hurdle amid GOP opposition and absences. Leaders told lawmakers to return to their offices during a Wednesday afternoon vote series, as the penultimate procedural vote in the series — just before the key vote to open debate — remained open for more than an hour while top lawmakers met with holdouts behind the scenes. Hardline Republicans — including many members of the House Freedom Caucus — were seen shuffling in-and-out of a room off the House floor during the vote series. Many of them had vowed to vote against the rule, which sets the parameters for debate. If enough did, and the effort failed, the House floor would have come to a standstill. Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.) — the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — Chip Roy (R-Texas), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and others were seen entering the room at various points. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), however, told reporters that leadership is waiting on some Republicans to arrive at the Capitol after facing travel issues with weather delaying flights across the country. Once the absent members arrive, they will resume the vote, he noted. 'As you can see, there's still a few members who couldn't get flights in but are driving and finding other ways to D.C. and we need them here. As you know, we need their votes. And they're gonna be here shortly. So when they get here within the next hour we'll come back, finish this vote, then go straight into the rule vote,' Scalise said. It remains unclear which lawmakers had not yet returned to Washington. There were eight outstanding votes on the open vote, but some of those individuals had been seen in the Capitol throughout the day. Despite the absences, it had still been clear that GOP leadership would have trouble clearing the procedural hurdle as a handful of hardline Republicans vowed to vote against the rule. Conservatives have expressed serious concerns with the deficit impact of the Senate's legislation, griping that it does not comply with a spending agreement they landed earlier this year. They are demanding changes in exchange for support. 'Hopefully it goes back to Rules [Committee], gets moved closer to the House position, and the Senate gets called back into town,' Harris told reporters. 'Senate never should have left town. The President asked us to stay until this issue was resolved, and the Senate left town.' Ahead of the vote, Harris predicted that the vote would fail. Moderates, meanwhile, have voiced worries about the impact Medicaid cuts and the rollback of green-energy tax credits will have on their districts.
Los Angeles Times
4 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
National pride is declining in America. And it's splitting by party lines, new Gallup polling shows
WASHINGTON — Only 36% of Democrats say they're 'extremely' or 'very' proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that's also clear among young people. The findings are a stark illustration of how many — but not all — Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Trump's first term. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are part of Generation Z, which is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That's compared with about 6 in 10 millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — and at least 7 in 10 U.S. adults in older generations. 'Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,' said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. 'But even among the older generations, we see that they're less patriotic than the ones before them, and they've become less patriotic over time. That's primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.' America's decline in national pride has been a slow erosion, with a steady downtick in Gallup's data since January 2001, when the question was first asked. Even during the tumultuous early years of the Iraq War, the vast majority of U.S. adults, whether Republican or Democrat, said they were 'extremely' or 'very' proud to be American. At that point, about 9 in 10 were 'extremely' or 'very' proud to be American. That remained high in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the consensus around American pride slipped in the years that followed, dropping to about 8 in 10 in 2006 and continuing a gradual decline. Now, 58% of U.S. adults say that, in a downward shift that's been driven almost entirely by Democrats and independents. The vast majority of Republicans continue to say they're proud to be American. Independents' pride in their national identity hit a new low in the most recent survey, at 53%, largely following that pattern of gradual decline. Democrats' diminished pride in being American is more clearly linked to Trump's time in office. When Trump first entered the White House, in 2017, about two-thirds of Democrats said they were proud to be American. That had fallen to 42% by 2020, just before Trump lost reelection to Democrat Joe Biden. But while Democrats' sense of national pride rebounded when Biden took office, it didn't go back to its pre-Trump levels. 'It's not just a Trump story,' Jones said. 'Something else is going on, and I think it's just younger generations coming in and not being as patriotic as older people.' Other recent polling shows that Democrats and independents are less likely than Republicans to say that expressing patriotism is important or to feel a sense of pride in their national leaders. Nearly 9 in 10 Republicans in a 2024 SSRS poll said they believed patriotism has a positive impact on the United States, with Democrats more divided: 45% said patriotism had a positive impact on the country, while 37% said it was negative. But a more general sense of discontent was clear on both sides of the aisle earlier this year, when a CNN/SSRS poll found that fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats and Republicans said 'proud' described the way they felt about politics in America today. In that survey, most Americans across the political spectrum said they were 'disappointed' or 'frustrated' with the country's politics. Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press.
San Francisco Chronicle
7 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
How an empty North Carolina rural hospital explains a GOP senator's vote against Trump's tax bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Though patients don't rush through the doors of this emergency room anymore, an empty hospital in Williamston, North Carolina, offers an evocative illustration of why Republican Sen. Thom Tillis would buck his party leaders to vote down President Donald Trump's signature domestic policy package. Martin General is one of a dozen hospitals that have closed in North Carolina over the last two decades. This is a problem that hospital systems and health experts warn may only worsen if the legislation passes with its $1 trillion cuts to the Medicaid program and new restrictions on enrollment in the coverage. Tillis' home state showcases the financial impact that more Medicaid dollars can have on hospitals in rural and poor regions throughout the country. Tillis said in a floor speech on Sunday, explaining his vote, that the GOP bill will siphon billions of dollars from Medicaid recipients and the health system in his state. 'Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise,' said Tillis, who has announced he will not seek re-election because of his opposition to the bill. Along with Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, he joined all Democrats in voting against the bill. Tillis later accused the president and his colleagues of not fully grasping the full impact of the bill: 'We owe it to the states to do the work to understand how these proposals affect them. How hard is that? I did it.' For Martin General Hospital in Williamston, North Carolina's decision to expand Medicaid came just too late. The emergency room abruptly closed its doors in the eastern North Carolina county that's home to more than 20,000 people in August 2023. The closest hospital is now about a 30-minute drive away. Then-Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper faulted the state's failure to expand the Medicaid program to more low-income adults sooner to prevent Martin General's closure. Now, Tillis and other state officials are worried the Republican bill, which will limit how much Medicaid money is sent back to providers, threatens funds for hospitals in their state again. And it could trigger a state Medicaid law that would close down North Carolina's otherwise successful expansion of coverage unless state legislators make changes or locate funds. The Medicaid dollars that Republicans seek to scale back in their bill have helped buttress the remaining rural hospitals across North Carolina, said Jay Ludlam, a deputy health secretary who leads North Carolina Medicaid. 'This has been a lifeline for our rural hospitals here in North Carolina and has helped provide and keep them open,' Ludlam said. 'Rural hospitals play an integral role in communities both as a point of access for health care but also for the local economy because of the contributions that those hospital and hospital systems make to those communities.' Republicans have responded to concerns with a provision that will provide $10 billion annually to rural hospitals for five years, or $50 billion in total. States that have declined to expand Medicaid coverage, the health insurance program for the poorest of Americans, have seen the closures accelerate. Tennessee, for example, has shed 500 beds since 2014, when a federal law first allowed states to expand Medicaid coverage to a greater share of low-income people. It's one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid. More than 300 hospitals could be at risk for closure if the Republicans' bill becomes law, an analysis by the Cecil G. Sheps Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found last month. The center tracks rural hospital closures. 'Substantial cuts to Medicaid or Medicare payments could increase the number of unprofitable rural hospitals and elevate their risk of financial distress,' the analysis concluded. 'In response, hospitals may be forced to reduce service lines, convert to a different type of health care facility, or close altogether.'
