In Case You Missed It… | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

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POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

This week at CBPP, we focused primarily on House Republicans’ debt-ceiling-and-cuts bill, which seeks to force harmful policies in areas including the federal budget and taxes, health, food assistance, income security, and state budgets and taxes.

The federal budget and taxes. In a statement, CBPP President Sharon Parrott said the bill puts the economy at grave risk while seeking deep, unpopular program cuts and giving billions to wealthy tax cheats. She also outlined the ten years of deep cuts that the bill would exact. Parrott, Samantha Jacoby, Allison Orris, LaDonna Pavetti, David Reich, and Dottie Rosenbaum released a cross-cutting analysis of the bill’s many harmful cuts. Reich walked through its $3.6 trillion, ten-year hit to vital government services. Jacoby explained that the bill’s proposal to rescind IRS funding would add to the deficit by letting wealthy tax cheats off the hook. Jacoby also noted the billions it would give to tax cheats nearly equals the billions it would take from low-income families.
Health. Gideon Lukens pointed to the millions of people in Medicaid expansion states at risk of losing health coverage. Laura Harker explained that taking people’s Medicaid away for not meeting a work-reporting requirement is a failed experiment that leaves people without the care they need. Lukens also cited the Department of Health and Human Services’ estimates of Medicaid enrollees at risk of losing coverage, and Sarah Lueck, the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates.
Food assistance. Rosenbaum noted that the bill could take food away from about a million older adults. Ty Jones Cox explained how it would make an already harsh work requirement even worse. Zoë Neuberger pointed out that the bill includes billions in cuts that would harm families with low incomes, including WIC participants.
Income security. Pavetti, Aditi Shrivastava, and Diana Azevedo-McCaffrey explained how the bill’s provisions on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) give states incentives to take cask benefits from families with the most significant needs. Pavetti and Azevedo-McCaffrey also cited program administrators across the political spectrum who find TANF work requirements incompatible with recipients’ needs.
State budgets and taxes. Michael Leachman noted that the bill would crush federal grant funding — by up to $1.35 trillion over ten years — which states use for schools, child care, public transit, environmental protection, and more.

We also released a separate roundup of all these analyses.

Outside the debt-ceiling-and-cuts bill, we focused on the federal budget, income security, health, and federal taxes.

On the federal budget, Kathleen Romig explained how raising the program’s retirement age would cut benefits for all new retirees.
On income security, Aditi Shrivastava and Urvi Patel looked into research showing that providing cash to families in poverty reduces family involvement in child welfare.
On health, we updated our resource tracking states’ unwinding from Medicaid continuous coverage. Anna Bailey lauded a new pathway that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gave states to cover certain Medicaid services for people leaving jail or prison. Allison Orris praised new CMS rules that will improve access to care for Medicaid enrollees in various types of services. We also released a Spanish-language statement in which Shelby Gonzales welcomed an end to the bar on affordable health coverage for people with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. And we updated our FAQ on Medicaid continuous coverage unwinding.
On federal taxes, we updated our backgrounder on the Earned Income Tax Credit.