People Across U.S. Would Face More Hardship Under Leaked Republican Budget & Tax Agenda

A new House Republican budget and tax options list, reported in Politico, confirms their agenda: massive cuts that take away or cut health coverage, food assistance, income assistance, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for millions of people in service to their profligate tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The list details cuts that would increase poverty and hardship and make health care more costly for a broad swath of people: kids, adults, seniors, children and adults with disabilities, and workers.

To cite some examples, House Republicans would:

• shift billions in Medicaid costs to states and take coverage away from millions of people;
• make it harder for eligible people to get Medicaid coverage and lower nursing home standards;
• take Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage away from many workers’ families;
• cut food assistance for 40 million people;
• make it harder for schools serving large numbers of low-income children to provide free meals to all students;
• take away the Child Tax Credit from children who are U.S. citizens;
• take away support for working people with low and moderate incomes by cutting the EITC in the name of “simplification;”
• increase poverty in families with more than one disabled child;
• take health care away from groups of immigrants with a lawful status; and
• go back to harmful public charge policies the first Trump Administration tried to put in place. 

This is not an agenda that comports with promises by then-candidate Trump to protect families who struggle financially. For these families, the cost of health care, food, and rent — and the cost and quality of their parents’ nursing home care — are a lot more important than the S&P 500 stock market index. 

But the new list isn’t just about harmful cuts that hurt people. It also shows the array of costly new tax cuts Republicans are considering as well as some tax increases. Of course, the expiring tax cuts are expensive and skewed already. The list of new tax cuts includes allowing billionaires to transfer massive sums to heirs tax-free and large new giveaways for very profitable corporations.   

Some of the revenue raisers have merit; we will see if they have any support. Others are just an effort to slow progress toward clean energy even as wildfires and extreme weather events become more frequent and destructive. 

This isn’t a responsible set of policy options. A better path is available. If we responsibly raise revenues and make much-needed investments in people and communities, we can broaden opportunity, narrow glaring racial and ethnic inequities, and improve our fiscal outlook.