The Wheels Come Off Trump’s Attempt To Pass A ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill

The true extent of the confusion between the Trump White House and Republicans in Congress on Trump’s fiscal agenda came crashing out into the open this week. 

Amid brutal intraparty tensions over how exactly they will enact sweeping cuts to Medicaid, far-right members of the House Republican conference jammed things up substantially this week when they demanded their own “big, beautiful” budget bill not add to the federal deficit. President Trump reportedly issued his own befuddling directive to Congress that complicates his initial push for an extension of his 2017 tax cuts, while Senate Republicans signaled they’re not sure how they feel about most aspects of the bill being cobbled together in the House. 

But Republican handwringing over how to discreetly slash Medicaid remained the main hurdle.  

For the past two weeks, as House Republicans attempt to put together a reconciliation package, Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans have been working on finding $880 billion in cuts over 10 years to programs under their jurisdiction. It is no secret that most of those billions of dollars in spending cuts will likely come in the form of slashing federal spending on Medicaid, the program that provides health coverage for more than 70 million low income and disabled Americans.

As they weigh their options, House Republicans have largely coalesced around what they see as a cost savings plan: imposing work requirements and stricter, more frequent eligibility checks and tightening rules to ensure that undocumented immigrants, who are already not eligible for the program, cannot receive any of its services.

But in order to meet their massive target goal, Republicans have also been mulling other options that would effectively gut Medicaid as we know it, including reducing the 90% federal matching rate for the Medicaid expansion population brought about by the Affordable Care Act and implementing per capita caps.

Per a new CBO estimate, both options would likely result in millions of low-income and disabled Americans losing their health care coverage as states would then have to figure out a way to take on the costs that the federal government has been covering up until this point.

Vulnerable House Republicans, aware of how unpopular these cuts will be back home, have been publicly insisting they won’t support a reconciliation package that would include any of those options.

Following a late night, closed-door Tuesday meeting with a group of them, Johnson said reducing the federal cost share is off the table. 

And on Thursday, he told reporters: “There’s still ongoing discussion about per capita caps, but it’s a sensitive thing.”

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer threw a wrench into Trump and House Republican leadership’s plans this week when she took to social media to claim Trump never wanted to cut Medicaid and also suggested that those who support the extreme cuts are sabotaging Republicans’ prospects in the midterms. Up until this point, much of the rhetoric coming from Republicans on making cuts to Medicaid has been coded and vague, as they attempt to come up with a solution that will allow them to cut federal spending on the widely used social safety net without publicly acknowledging that the cuts will mean that people will lose their health coverage. The messaging around enacting work requirements is an example. 

Members of the online MAGAsphere like Loomer and Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist in Trump’s first term, are seemingly coming to the realization that a large chunk of Trump voters are on Medicaid. They’ve begun sounding the alarm on the sweeping cuts being plotted behind closed doors.

“Medicaid you’ve got to be careful, cause a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you. If you don’t think so, you’re dead wrong,” Bannon said earlier this year. 

Meanwhile, Energy and Commerce Republicans met several times this week, also behind closed-doors, to try and work through the internal fight over how exactly they want to enact cuts to Medicaid.

On Tuesday and Wednesday committee members walked out the lengthy meetings largely tight-lipped. 

“If we’re gonna get done by Memorial Day … we need to do something next week,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) told reporters following Wednesday’s meeting.

The panel is set to meet Tuesday at 2 p.m ET to mark up its portion of the bill, according to a person familiar with the schedule.

As leadership and vulnerable Republicans are mulling over what form the cuts will take, hardliners are demanding that leadership adhere to the strict spending cuts outlined in the budget resolution.

Thirty two House Republicans, including members of the Freedom Caucus and the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to House leadership warning that in order to secure their votes “the reconciliation bill must not add to the deficit.”

If Republicans fall short on meeting their spending cut target, they will have to scale back on the tax predictions — meaning it will be that much harder for them to make the soon-to-expire 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent. To complicate matters, the Washington Post reported Thursday that Trump has instructed Republican leadership to, confusingly, raise taxes on the wealthy. It appears to be an effort to assuage hardliners who are worked up about the deficit. Just a day later, he seemingly reversed course, saying in a Truth Social post that Republicans “should probably not” boost taxes on the country’s richest, but he’s “OK if they do!!!”

Despite all the disagreements, both House GOP leadership and President Trump are projecting confidence.

“We are making great progress on ‘The One, Big, Beautiful Bill,’” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Johnson told reporters that House committees will “100%” hold more markups next week, keeping them on track to meet their self-imposed timeline.

“It’s not going to be perfect, as you’re seeing. And everybody’s doing what they need to do, which is, represent their district,” Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) told reporters on Wednesday. “At the end of the day, we’ll all come together and we’ll end up passing one big, beautiful bill.”

Even if McClain’s optimism, as she described it to reporters, pays off and House Republican leadership manages to bring everyone together and pass a reconciliation package by Memorial Day, the roadblocks don’t end there.

In a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and other members of Senate Republican leadership told their caucus that House Republicans are not being aggressive enough in its effort to shrink federal spending, Punchbowl reports.

Thune and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) reportedly said they want to consider lowering the federal match rate for the expansion population, even though Johnson had already told reporters that option was off the table the previous day.

On the Medicaid slashing front, Senate Republican leadership also has problems of their own. Several Republican senators, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), have already indicated they won’t get behind deep cuts to the program, which are widely used by their constituents.

House and Senate Republicans will eventually have to agree on the cuts in order to pass their reconciliation package.