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House Speaker Mike Johnson applauds in the House chamber as the House passed Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” on Thursday, July 3. <\/span>Francis Chung\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just in time<\/span> for the nation\u2019s birthday, House Republicans have passed the most\u00a0regressive<\/a>\u00a0legislation in recent memory, a bill that\u2019s expected<\/a> to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and boot some 12 million Americans off their health insurance, even as it explodes<\/a> the federal deficit\u2014all to extend and expand tax cuts that favor the rich.<\/p>\n The vote was 218-214.<\/p>\n Republicans unilaterally shoved through their \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a>,\u201d awkwardly named with President Donald Trump\u2019s phrase, just in time to meet his demand that they deliver it for his signature by Independence Day.<\/p>\n Their fealty<\/a> to Trump helped House Speaker Mike Johnson overcome resistance<\/a> among some GOP members, even though the measure flagrantly violates Trump\u2019s many<\/a> vows not to reduce Medicaid spending. Trump has addressed that contradiction by falsely claiming<\/a> the bill doesn\u2019t<\/a> cut Medicaid or other benefits.<\/p>\n No Democrat in either chamber voted for the bill, and the party is expected<\/a> to<\/a> make the cuts to Medicaid and other safety net programs, including food stamps, the center of their efforts to retake control of the House and Senate in next year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n Here are some of the aspects that have led critics to<\/a> declare this \u201cthe worst bill in modern American history.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s incredibly regressive: <\/span>The bill cuts taxes<\/a> for rich people while reducing benefits for the poor. Broadly, it extends the 2017 tax cuts Congress passed during Trump\u2019s first term while partly offsetting the cost with deep cuts to health care spending, food assistance, and other programs. Although it includes some tax cuts that would benefit lower-income Americans, the gains, in aggregate, flow to the rich<\/a>, with the top 1 percent of families getting a break (according to an estimate from an earlier version of the bill) of $79,000 a year while families in bottom fifth would get $160. But that\u2019s before you consider the lost benefits.<\/p>\n When you factor in spending cuts to the aid programs, those wealthiest households end up with an average 4 percent increase in after-tax income, while the bottom 20 percent of earners are docked by nearly that same percentage, according to a\u00a0Yale Budget Lab analysis<\/a>. In a recent survey of 4,500 Americans by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and post-doc Patrick Sullivan, Republican respondents, when informed of these numbers, opposed the bill<\/a> by a ratio of 3-t0-1, and overall support for it plummeted to just 11 percent.<\/p>\n It blows up the deficit: <\/span>The bill will increase the deficit by $4.1 trillion, including interest\u00a0over the next decade, according to<\/a> the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget , by extending the 2017 tax cuts and adding new ones aimed at fulfilling Trump promises. These include an extension of a home mortgage interest\u00a0deduction and a \u201cno tax on tips\u201d provision, albeit with a $25,000 cap on the amount of tips workers can claim\u2014which experts<\/a> say<\/a> means it will not help lower-income service workers.<\/p>\n It slashes Medicaid:<\/span> The bill includes both direct<\/a> and indirect cuts to Medicaid spending. It limits so-called Medicaid provider taxes that states use to collect more matching funds from the program. (Those states are taking advantage of a loophole in the law, but by cutting it off, the bill leaves them with less Medicaid funding, likely causing many to reduce services.) The legislation also imposes a requirement<\/a> that Medicaid recipients provide proof of employment to get benefits. This imposes a complicated bureaucratic burden on beneficiaries that CBO says will cut $280 billion in Medicaid spending over six years\u2014in many cases because even many people who work (most recipients do) won\u2019t be able to navigate the red tape the bill imposes.<\/p>\n It ends health coverage for millions:<\/span> Nearly 12 million Americans will lose coverage as a result of the bill, according<\/a> to CBO, mainly due to the burdensome new requirements places on Medcaid recipients, and steps that make it harder to sign up, like limited enrollment periods and new paperwork requirements.<\/p>\n It<\/span>\u2018<\/span>s an impediment for women\u2019s health care:<\/span>\u00a0Of the 24 million women currently enrolled in Medicaid,\u00a056 percent<\/a>\u00a0are of reproductive age and the majority are women of color. The bill excludes Planned Parenthood and some other providers from Medicaid, reducing access to birth control and other reproductive care. The cuts could also force\u00a0more than 140 rural hospitals<\/a>\u00a0to shut down obstetrics services or drastically curtail them.<\/p>\n It slashes food stamps:<\/span><\/strong> The bill will cut federal spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps poor people buy food, by an estimated<\/a> $287 billion over a decade.\u00a0It also includes<\/a> a bizarre provision that rewards states with the highest error rates in awarding food stamps. That\u2019s the result of legislative wrangling in the Senate where, in a bid to win over Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, GOP leaders\u2014barred by procedural rules from simply exempting Alaska\u2014instead exempted the 10 states with the highest error rates. (Alaska is the highest.) This actually gives states on the cusp of making the list an incentive to get worse<\/em>.<\/p>\n As with Medicaid, most of the cuts to SNAP and other aid programs will be done backhandedly, via onerous bureaucratic burdens. As the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a>: \u201cBy including dozens of changes to dates, deadlines, document requirements and rules, Republicans have turned paperwork into one of the bill\u2019s crucial policy-making tools, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to help offset their signature tax cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the new requirements, \u201cable-bodied\u201d elders, ages 55 to 64, will have to submit documents verifying their citizenship. And rather than letting states use information already on hand to verify the citizenship of Obamacare subsidy applicants, the legislation requires people to track down and submit those documents. Republicans, who for years have railed against federal bureaucracy, claim these paperwork tasks would weed out only people who don\u2019t qualify for benefits, but CBO and many experts<\/a> say such hurdles will cause millions of people who qualify for Medicaid, food stamps, and health subsidies to lose them.<\/p>\n It undermines clean energy development:<\/strong><\/span> The bill slashes spending on clean energy approved under President Joe Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act, likely leading<\/a> to job losses and a capitulation to China\u2019s domination of the sector. It removes<\/a> tax incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy projects, though it delays some of the cuts until after the midterms. It also ends<\/a> subsidies of up to $7,500 for electronic vehicles purchased this year.<\/p>\n It greatly expands ICE detentions and enforcement:<\/span> As masked ICE agents stir up neighborhoods around the country, the bill throws cash at the agency\u2014more than $100 billion in new funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029. As my colleague Inae Oh reports<\/a>, that would \u201cfund the\u00a0single largest increase<\/a>\u00a0in immigration enforcement in US history. It would ramp up mass deportations to an unprecedented scale; create\u00a0hastily built, sordid detention centers<\/a>\u00a0across the country; and all but ensure that millions of people who haven\u2019t been accused of crimes are disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n