Latest news with #MedicaidReform
Fox News
3 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
JD Vance poised to clinch victory for Trump's landmark bill as GOP finalizes strategy
Vice President JD Vance could deliver the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate for President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful, bill" should it fail to receive enough support from Republican lawmakers. Republicans are scrambling to reform and pass the measure ahead of Trump's July 4 deadline after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough's determination Thursday that several Medicaid reforms in the sweeping tax and domestic policy package did not follow Senate rules and must be removed. As president of the Senate, the vice president casts a tie-breaking vote when a measure fails to receive majority support. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, meaning three Republican senators could opt out of voting for the bill, and it could still pass with Vance's support. Vance has previously cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, including in January to confirm Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and on a measure in April to curb Trump's ability to impose global tariffs. Vance's office declined to provide comment to Fox News Digital. Republican lawmakers who've historically voiced concerns about certain Medicaid provisions included in the "big, beautiful, bill" include senators Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. These lawmakers have cautioned that the reforms would prove detrimental to rural hospitals in their states. Spokespeople for Collins, Hawley and Murkowski did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. The domestic policy package also included provisions to beef up border security and would also make permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from Trump's first term. The White House's Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought told lawmakers earlier this month failure to pass the measure would result in a 60% tax hike for Americans and would trigger a recession. As a result, Matt Wolking, who previously served as the deputy communications director for Trump's 2020 campaign, said Senate Republicans will ultimately band together to approve the legislation to prevent the tax cuts from expiring. "Senate Republicans don't want to be responsible for the massive tax increase on the middle class that will occur if they fail to extend President Trump's tax cuts. So, ultimately, they will get this done," Wolking, currently with GOP consulting firm Axiom Strategies, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "President Trump has a big asset in these negotiations with JD Vance, and whether he is needed to break a tie or not, the administration will have another major win under its belt heading into the midterm elections where the strength of the economy will be a big factor," Wolking said. Earlier this month, Vance met with Republican senators to discuss the measure during a closed-door lunch and said afterward he was hopeful about the odds of passing the legislation on time. "I mean, look, I can't make any promises. … I can't predict the future, but I do think that we're in a good place to get this done by the July 4 recess," Vance told reporters June 17. Vance also told reporters that despite concerns from lawmakers, including Collins, regarding certain Medicaid provisions included in the measure, he would work to address any issues raised. Still, he said there was broad agreement within the party on reforming Medicaid to block access for illegal immigrants. "They're all very confident we're eventually going to get there," Vance said. The House narrowly passed its version of the measure in May by a 215-214 margin, with two Republicans voting against the legislation. Trump urged lawmakers to get the legislation to the finish line Thursday, labeling the measure the "single-most important piece of border legislation ever to cross the floor of Congress." "This is the ultimate codification of our agenda to — very simply, a phrase that's been used pretty well by me over the past 10 years, but maybe even before that — make America great again," Trump said at a "One, Big, Beautiful Event" at the White House Thursday.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Right down the line': Medicaid reform in 'big, beautiful bill' divides lawmakers by party
Medicaid reform in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" has drawn a partisan line through Congress. Democrats have railed against potential Medicaid cuts since Trump was elected, while Republicans have celebrated Medicaid reform through the reconciliation process as an efficient way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in the welfare program. Fox News Digital asked lawmakers from both ends of the political spectrum to react to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's Medicaid reform. The results were as expectedly divided. "This is all B.S., what the Democrats are doing," Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital. "They're pushing the agenda that we're cutting 10 million people off Medicaid. It's people that actually shouldn't be on it, illegals that shouldn't be on it. We're reforming it." Gop Rails Against 'Blatantly False' Dem Claims About Medicaid Reform In Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency that has been ridiculed by Republicans, estimated this week that Trump's "big, beautiful bill" would leave 10.9 million people without health insurance, including 1.4 million who are in the country without legal status in state-funded programs. Read On The Fox News App But Republicans are holding firm in their defense of Medicaid reform, which Republicans say only cuts benefits to illegal immigrants, those ineligible to receive benefits who are currently receiving benefits, duplicate enrollees in one or more states and those who are able but choosing not to work. "The people who would not continue to get Medicaid benefits under this bill were not qualified to get them in the first place," Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Fox News Digital. Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Faces Resistance From Republican Senators Over Debt Fears Democrats continue to sound off on the healthcare threat of eliminating 10 million people from Medicaid. Not a single House Democrat voted to pass Trump's championed legislation, which includes fulfilling key campaign promises like cutting taxes, immigration reform and American energy production. "These burdensome regulatory requirements for proving that somebody has obtained or sought work are going to mean millions of people will go without healthcare, and the restrictions on food assistance are equally an obstacle to people meeting their everyday needs," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. Blumenthal added he is "very, very concerned about these seemingly cruel and unproductive ways of raising money simply to finance tax cuts" for "wealthy billionaires." New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said he is happy to have an "honest conversation" about government efficiency and saving taxpayer dollars, but that's not the reality of this bill. "People are struggling, and I feel like, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, we should be able to make sure that people can have the basic needs they need to be able to survive," Kim said of Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Fox News Digital there is "nothing beautiful" about Trump's "big, beautiful bill." "This is horrific, and it adds massive amounts to our debt, compromising our ability to [fund] the fundamentals in the future, foundations for families to thrive — health care, housing, education, good-paying jobs. That's what we should be doing here, not doing massive tax cuts for billionaires and paying for them by tearing down programs for ordinary families," Merkley said. The national debt stands at more than $36.2 trillion as of June 5, according to the Fox Business, based on data from the Treasury Department. The CBO's report this week also estimated Trump's bill will cut taxes by $3.7 trillion while raising deficits by $2.4 trillion over a decade. Fox News' Anders Hagstrom and Eric Revell contributed to this report. Original article source: 'Right down the line': Medicaid reform in 'big, beautiful bill' divides lawmakers by party
CNN
07-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
GOP senators' top concerns with Trump's big agenda bill, in their own words
Republicans have set an ambitious deadline of trying to pass President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda through Congress by the fourth of July, kickstarting an intensive negotiation in the US Senate where Republican lawmakers are all over the map when it comes to the specific changes they want to see made to the House-passed bill. The challenge ahead for Senate Majority Leader John Thune is he can only afford to lose three votes, but he must find consensus between conservatives in his conference who are pushing for more spending cuts and others who already fear that some of the cuts to Medicaid and rollbacks to clean energy tax credits that were a cornerstone of the House bill went too far. It's a herculean task and one made more complicated by Elon Musk publicly blasting the House bill. Adding to the challenge is the fact that whatever the Senate settles on will need to go back to the House and win approval there before the President can sign it and pass it into law. Here are senators describing in their own words their concerns and what they want to see changed in the weeks ahead. The interviews were conducted in the first week in June after lawmakers returned from recess. The transcripts below have been lightly edited for clarity. Why it matters: New work requirements for Medicaid and changes to how states can levy provider taxes made up a significant amount of the ways to save money in the House bill. Speeding up how quickly those work requirements were implemented also went a long way to secure support from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Yet a handful of GOP senators say they need to look closely at how the changes could affect their states and their constituents. And some Republicans in the Senate are warning that the changes may need to be scaled back, a potential problem for House conservatives. 'I'm concerned about people who are here legally, residents of my state, citizens of my state who are working and would lose health care coverage. I am not going to vote for that … There are a host of concerns but Medicaid is the big kahuna and that is where I am training my focus and my fire. I've got 1.3 million Missourians on Medicaid, or CHIP, so that's the hill to fight on.' CNN: 'Do you have concerns about the changes to the provider tax on the Medicaid side?' Justice: 'The provider tax is really important. I mean, you know, to to a lot of states, you know that we, we, we can't let that just get undermined, because you get that undermined and everything you can hurt a lot of our nursing homes a lot.' Reporter: 'My follow up question is does the House bill cut Medicaid to the bone? When you say that, are you worried that they're gonna have bigger cuts are you fine with the House as it is?' Justice: 'I do not think it cuts it to the bone, or any of the bone, but but there's, you know, you get you gotta get through all the fine print and everything, because there could be things that absolutely hurt people and everything.' 'I'm still going through the issues that I see as problematic. I'm looking at the changes in education programs like Pell grants. I've told you many times that I'm looking at the impact on rural hospitals. I support the work requirements that are in the bill. I think that makes sense.' 'There is a lot of concern. I did a couple roundtables at home, and so, you know, we talked about it, where I can look and see more deeply. There were some nuances to it that I hadn't actually understood before that are in the House bill. We haven't had a chance to digest how it's going to impact our hospitals.' 'I've said before that I want to see very – I want to make sure that we're not harming hospitals that we just spent COVID money to save. So, that's part of it, but I also care a lot about, with disabilities and so, Medicaid is an important issue. So, we'll see how, what the Senate does and I'll be lobbying to try to get something that's acceptable to me.' 'We have to take a look at states that have expanded Medicaid, to make sure that we're making a smart decision for millions of people who are under expansion – North Carolina, 620,000 Medicaid recipients alone. So, we've got to work on getting that right, giving the state legislatures and others a chance to react to it, make a recommendation, or make a change. And that's all the implementation stuff that we're beginning to talk about now that we're in possession of the bill.' Why it matters: In the Senate, a handful of lawmakers have made clear they don't think the House bill does enough to curb the country's spending problems. The argument was bolstered this week by two things. First, Musk attacked members for backing the bill he argued didn't go far enough. Then, the Congressional Budget Office released a report that they anticipated the bill in its totality would increase the country's deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. The challenge here is that finding additional cuts that 51 senators can support and 218 House Republicans can sign off on is tough to do. Some of the largest savings that could have been made to programs like Medicaid were rejected in the House already by swing district Republicans who argued that the cuts could harm their constituents. Johnson: 'I talked to the President today… he's encouraged me to support the bill and I said – listen, we all want him to succeed but my bottom line is we need to seriously address the debt and deficit issue.' CNN: 'Would you be open to passing something close to the House bill now with a promise of changes in the future?' Johnson: 'Listen, I want to help the president succeed in this thing so I've got a pretty open mind. My requirement has always been a commitment to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending and a process to achieve and maintain it.' 'Come the end of September, when our fiscal year ends, the deficit's going to be $2.2 trillion. That's just not conservative. They're borrowing $5 trillion, that means they're anticipating the following year being over $2 trillion as well, so it's just not a conservative thing to do, and I've told them I can't support the bill if they're together. If they were to separate out and take the debt ceiling off that, I very much could consider the rest of the bill.' Curtis: 'If you look at the House bill, just to simplify it a little bit, we're going to spend in the next 10 years about $20 trillion more than the revenue we bring in, and they're cutting $1.5 trillion out of $20 trillion. Most of us wouldn't do that in our businesses, in our homes, and certainly don't do it in the state of Utah. And so that's a big concern to me.' CNN: 'So any substantial changes to get your support?' Curtis: 'I'm not drawing red lines, right, like I'm being careful. But I think we have to do our best work to get my support.' Why it matters: At the end of the House's precarious negotiations, members of the House Freedom caucus got assurances that many of the clean energy tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden's legacy would be rolled back and that the process for ending them would begin sooner than the original legislative text had laid out. It was a huge victory for conservatives. But, in the Senate, a handful of lawmakers are worried that the rollbacks could affect projects in their states that create jobs and income for their constituents. 'On the energy tax credits – as you know, obviously a great deal of focus on oil and natural gas in the state, but also on the clean energy side as well.' 'I've made clear that I think these investments that we have made as a country in some of these clean energy technologies, we're seeing that play forward in a lot of states, and so let's be smart about these, let's make sure if you're going to do phase-outs of this, that they're reasonable phase-outs. So I'm going to be advocating for that.' 'We're going to pay attention to how it affects Kansas. One of the issues is I think there is a lot of Senate sentiment that it's too rapid.' 'Look, the key there is to go at it through the lens of a businessperson. It's easy, you know, from a political standpoint, to cancel programs that are out there. We need to be smart about where capital has been deployed to minimize the impact on the message we're sending –that we'd send businesses, that every two or four years we have massive changes in our priorities for energy transition. We just got to get it right. It doesn't mean that I think we have to extend every program, necessarily, but I do think we have to hold businesses harmless for the programs that are there, and then calculate what the economic effect is going to be. If we don't – this is not all their spending, there's economic growth behind a lot of these as well, as we've seen in North Carolina.' Why it matters: A group of New York and California Republicans fought hard in the House to increase how much in state and local taxes constituents can deduct on their federal returns. The deduction cap went from $10,000 to $40,000 for people who fall below a certain income threshold, but the benefit really helps voters in high-tax states. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson's majority is built on winning some of these high-tax districts. And several members in his conference made it clear they'd vote against the bill without a boost to SALT. In the Senate, the politics are very different. The provision is costly and there aren't any Republican senators representing high-tax states like New York, California, New Jersey or Illinois. Therefore, there is a lot of grumbling from GOP senators who would rather spend the billions it costs to raise the threshold on another area of the tax code. 'There's not a single senator from New York or New Jersey or California and so there's not a strong mood in the Senate Republican caucus right now to do $353 billion for states that basically the other states subsidize. But that being said, you know, like I say on every issue, nothing is resolved until it's resolved and we are working things out.' CNN: 'Is there any way the $40,000 cap survives?' Tillis: 'I hope not. But, you know, I'll have to that is one where I don't. I believe when I draw a red line, I stick to it. I'm not willing to draw a red line there, but I would be a lot happier, in total, I'd be a lot happier seeing that number come down. I've said it before. It's because it's personal to me. I took all the criticism for making North Carolina not a SALT state, and now you're telling me I've got to subsidize the bad decisions made in Albany and Sacramento. So it's at the end of the day, if they do their work in their state, they should be talking to state senators, not US senators, to fix that problem.'
CNN
07-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
GOP senators' top concerns with Trump's big agenda bill, in their own words
Republicans have set an ambitious deadline of trying to pass President Donald Trump's sweeping agenda through Congress by the fourth of July, kickstarting an intensive negotiation in the US Senate where Republican lawmakers are all over the map when it comes to the specific changes they want to see made to the House-passed bill. The challenge ahead for Senate Majority Leader John Thune is he can only afford to lose three votes, but he must find consensus between conservatives in his conference who are pushing for more spending cuts and others who already fear that some of the cuts to Medicaid and rollbacks to clean energy tax credits that were a cornerstone of the House bill went too far. It's a herculean task and one made more complicated by Elon Musk publicly blasting the House bill. Adding to the challenge is the fact that whatever the Senate settles on will need to go back to the House and win approval there before the President can sign it and pass it into law. Here are senators describing in their own words their concerns and what they want to see changed in the weeks ahead. The interviews were conducted in the first week in June after lawmakers returned from recess. The transcripts below have been lightly edited for clarity. Why it matters: New work requirements for Medicaid and changes to how states can levy provider taxes made up a significant amount of the ways to save money in the House bill. Speeding up how quickly those work requirements were implemented also went a long way to secure support from the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Yet a handful of GOP senators say they need to look closely at how the changes could affect their states and their constituents. And some Republicans in the Senate are warning that the changes may need to be scaled back, a potential problem for House conservatives. 'I'm concerned about people who are here legally, residents of my state, citizens of my state who are working and would lose health care coverage. I am not going to vote for that … There are a host of concerns but Medicaid is the big kahuna and that is where I am training my focus and my fire. I've got 1.3 million Missourians on Medicaid, or CHIP, so that's the hill to fight on.' CNN: 'Do you have concerns about the changes to the provider tax on the Medicaid side?' Justice: 'The provider tax is really important. I mean, you know, to to a lot of states, you know that we, we, we can't let that just get undermined, because you get that undermined and everything you can hurt a lot of our nursing homes a lot.' Reporter: 'My follow up question is does the House bill cut Medicaid to the bone? When you say that, are you worried that they're gonna have bigger cuts are you fine with the House as it is?' Justice: 'I do not think it cuts it to the bone, or any of the bone, but but there's, you know, you get you gotta get through all the fine print and everything, because there could be things that absolutely hurt people and everything.' 'I'm still going through the issues that I see as problematic. I'm looking at the changes in education programs like Pell grants. I've told you many times that I'm looking at the impact on rural hospitals. I support the work requirements that are in the bill. I think that makes sense.' 'There is a lot of concern. I did a couple roundtables at home, and so, you know, we talked about it, where I can look and see more deeply. There were some nuances to it that I hadn't actually understood before that are in the House bill. We haven't had a chance to digest how it's going to impact our hospitals.' 'I've said before that I want to see very – I want to make sure that we're not harming hospitals that we just spent COVID money to save. So, that's part of it, but I also care a lot about, with disabilities and so, Medicaid is an important issue. So, we'll see how, what the Senate does and I'll be lobbying to try to get something that's acceptable to me.' 'We have to take a look at states that have expanded Medicaid, to make sure that we're making a smart decision for millions of people who are under expansion – North Carolina, 620,000 Medicaid recipients alone. So, we've got to work on getting that right, giving the state legislatures and others a chance to react to it, make a recommendation, or make a change. And that's all the implementation stuff that we're beginning to talk about now that we're in possession of the bill.' Why it matters: In the Senate, a handful of lawmakers have made clear they don't think the House bill does enough to curb the country's spending problems. The argument was bolstered this week by two things. First, Musk attacked members for backing the bill he argued didn't go far enough. Then, the Congressional Budget Office released a report that they anticipated the bill in its totality would increase the country's deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years. The challenge here is that finding additional cuts that 51 senators can support and 218 House Republicans can sign off on is tough to do. Some of the largest savings that could have been made to programs like Medicaid were rejected in the House already by swing district Republicans who argued that the cuts could harm their constituents. Johnson: 'I talked to the President today… he's encouraged me to support the bill and I said – listen, we all want him to succeed but my bottom line is we need to seriously address the debt and deficit issue.' CNN: 'Would you be open to passing something close to the House bill now with a promise of changes in the future?' Johnson: 'Listen, I want to help the president succeed in this thing so I've got a pretty open mind. My requirement has always been a commitment to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending and a process to achieve and maintain it.' 'Come the end of September, when our fiscal year ends, the deficit's going to be $2.2 trillion. That's just not conservative. They're borrowing $5 trillion, that means they're anticipating the following year being over $2 trillion as well, so it's just not a conservative thing to do, and I've told them I can't support the bill if they're together. If they were to separate out and take the debt ceiling off that, I very much could consider the rest of the bill.' Curtis: 'If you look at the House bill, just to simplify it a little bit, we're going to spend in the next 10 years about $20 trillion more than the revenue we bring in, and they're cutting $1.5 trillion out of $20 trillion. Most of us wouldn't do that in our businesses, in our homes, and certainly don't do it in the state of Utah. And so that's a big concern to me.' CNN: 'So any substantial changes to get your support?' Curtis: 'I'm not drawing red lines, right, like I'm being careful. But I think we have to do our best work to get my support.' Why it matters: At the end of the House's precarious negotiations, members of the House Freedom caucus got assurances that many of the clean energy tax credits that were part of former President Joe Biden's legacy would be rolled back and that the process for ending them would begin sooner than the original legislative text had laid out. It was a huge victory for conservatives. But, in the Senate, a handful of lawmakers are worried that the rollbacks could affect projects in their states that create jobs and income for their constituents. 'On the energy tax credits – as you know, obviously a great deal of focus on oil and natural gas in the state, but also on the clean energy side as well.' 'I've made clear that I think these investments that we have made as a country in some of these clean energy technologies, we're seeing that play forward in a lot of states, and so let's be smart about these, let's make sure if you're going to do phase-outs of this, that they're reasonable phase-outs. So I'm going to be advocating for that.' 'We're going to pay attention to how it affects Kansas. One of the issues is I think there is a lot of Senate sentiment that it's too rapid.' 'Look, the key there is to go at it through the lens of a businessperson. It's easy, you know, from a political standpoint, to cancel programs that are out there. We need to be smart about where capital has been deployed to minimize the impact on the message we're sending –that we'd send businesses, that every two or four years we have massive changes in our priorities for energy transition. We just got to get it right. It doesn't mean that I think we have to extend every program, necessarily, but I do think we have to hold businesses harmless for the programs that are there, and then calculate what the economic effect is going to be. If we don't – this is not all their spending, there's economic growth behind a lot of these as well, as we've seen in North Carolina.' Why it matters: A group of New York and California Republicans fought hard in the House to increase how much in state and local taxes constituents can deduct on their federal returns. The deduction cap went from $10,000 to $40,000 for people who fall below a certain income threshold, but the benefit really helps voters in high-tax states. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson's majority is built on winning some of these high-tax districts. And several members in his conference made it clear they'd vote against the bill without a boost to SALT. In the Senate, the politics are very different. The provision is costly and there aren't any Republican senators representing high-tax states like New York, California, New Jersey or Illinois. Therefore, there is a lot of grumbling from GOP senators who would rather spend the billions it costs to raise the threshold on another area of the tax code. 'There's not a single senator from New York or New Jersey or California and so there's not a strong mood in the Senate Republican caucus right now to do $353 billion for states that basically the other states subsidize. But that being said, you know, like I say on every issue, nothing is resolved until it's resolved and we are working things out.' CNN: 'Is there any way the $40,000 cap survives?' Tillis: 'I hope not. But, you know, I'll have to that is one where I don't. I believe when I draw a red line, I stick to it. I'm not willing to draw a red line there, but I would be a lot happier, in total, I'd be a lot happier seeing that number come down. I've said it before. It's because it's personal to me. I took all the criticism for making North Carolina not a SALT state, and now you're telling me I've got to subsidize the bad decisions made in Albany and Sacramento. So it's at the end of the day, if they do their work in their state, they should be talking to state senators, not US senators, to fix that problem.'
Fox News
07-06-2025
- Health
- Fox News
'Right down the line': Medicaid reform in 'big, beautiful bill' divides lawmakers by party
Medicaid reform in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" has drawn a partisan line through Congress. Democrats have railed against potential Medicaid cuts since Trump was elected, while Republicans have celebrated Medicaid reform through the reconciliation process as an efficient way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in the welfare program. Fox News Digital asked lawmakers from both ends of the political spectrum to react to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's Medicaid reform. The results were as expectedly divided. "This is all B.S., what the Democrats are doing," Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., told Fox News Digital. "They're pushing the agenda that we're cutting 10 million people off Medicaid. It's people that actually shouldn't be on it, illegals that shouldn't be on it. We're reforming it." The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency that has been ridiculed by Republicans, estimated this week that Trump's "big, beautiful bill" would leave 10.9 million people without health insurance, including 1.4 million who are in the country without legal status in state-funded programs. But Republicans are holding firm in their defense of Medicaid reform, which Republicans say only cuts benefits to illegal immigrants, those ineligible to receive benefits who are currently receiving benefits, duplicate enrollees in one or more states and those who are able but choosing not to work. "The people who would not continue to get Medicaid benefits under this bill were not qualified to get them in the first place," Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Fox News Digital. Democrats continue to sound off on the healthcare threat of eliminating 10 million people from Medicaid. Not a single House Democrat voted to pass Trump's championed legislation, which includes fulfilling key campaign promises like cutting taxes, immigration reform and American energy production. "These burdensome regulatory requirements for proving that somebody has obtained or sought work are going to mean millions of people will go without healthcare, and the restrictions on food assistance are equally an obstacle to people meeting their everyday needs," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. Blumenthal added he is "very, very concerned about these seemingly cruel and unproductive ways of raising money simply to finance tax cuts" for "wealthy billionaires." New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said he is happy to have an "honest conversation" about government efficiency and saving taxpayer dollars, but that's not the reality of this bill. "People are struggling, and I feel like, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, we should be able to make sure that people can have the basic needs they need to be able to survive," Kim said of Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., told Fox News Digital there is "nothing beautiful" about Trump's "big, beautiful bill." "This is horrific, and it adds massive amounts to our debt, compromising our ability to [fund] the fundamentals in the future, foundations for families to thrive — health care, housing, education, good-paying jobs. That's what we should be doing here, not doing massive tax cuts for billionaires and paying for them by tearing down programs for ordinary families," Merkley said. The national debt stands at more than $36.2 trillion as of June 5, according to the Fox Business, based on data from the Treasury Department. The CBO's report this week also estimated Trump's bill will cut taxes by $3.7 trillion while raising deficits by $2.4 trillion over a decade.
