Washington, D.C. — House and Senate Republicans are rushing through the budget reconciliation process, pushing dramatic cuts to necessities for working-class people to benefit the wealthy. A new Center for American Progress article identifies eight ways that the Senate’s version of the budget bill would be even more extreme than the one passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. This includes:
- Reducing food support for veterans: A bipartisan agreement in 2023 exempted veterans from SNAP work requirements until October 1, 2030, and the House-passed One Big, Beautiful Budget Act did not threaten that agreement. The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry’s proposal would end this exemption for the estimated 1.2 million veterans receiving SNAP. Veterans may have difficulty finding employment or documenting nonmilitary employment if they have been away from home and unable to retain nonmilitary records.
- Reducing food support for people who are homeless: Bipartisan agreement has also kept people who are homeless from having to provide regular documentation of their work, but the Senate would threaten SNAP for an estimated 1 million people experiencing homelessness and receiving SNAP. And alongside other groups, if someone fails to document that they’re working, they would lose access to SNAP for three years—which is particularly harsh for someone who’s already struggling financially.
- Reducing food support for youth aging out of foster care: A bipartisan agreement in 2023 exempted former foster youth who are 24 years old or younger and were in foster care on their 18th birthday from SNAP work requirements until October 1, 2030, and the House-passed One Big, Beautiful Budget Act did not threaten that agreement. Young adults coming out of foster care can struggle to transition to higher education or employment, meaning that about 50 percent of them are employed at the age of 24. This bill would take away food from the other 50 percent, who have few other resources to fall back on.
- Reducing food support for stay-at-home parents: The House-passed version of the reconciliation bill carved out a married, stay-at-home parent from food assistance paperwork requirements if their spouse met the requirements. The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry subjects both parents to paperwork requirements.
- Forcing Medicaid work requirements on parents: The House-passed bill imposes work-reporting requirements on adults enrolled in Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion, requiring individuals ages 19 to 64 to document at least 80 hours per month of work or other qualifying activities in order to maintain their Medicaid coverage. The House version includes exemptions for parents with children over age 14, yet the Senate version strips the budget bill of this exemption. This could leave 160,000 to 380,000 additional Medicaid enrollees losing coverage on top of the 5.2 million expected to lose coverage.
- Punishing states for expanding Medicaid: The House-passed version of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act freezes how much all states can tax providers in order to generate additional funds for their state Medicaid programs at current rates, with a “safe harbor” limit of 6 percent of net patient revenues. The Senate plan phases down the safe harbor ceiling to 3.5 percent (excluding nursing homes and intermediate care facilities) for Medicaid expansion states only, making it even more difficult for 40 states to sustainably fund their Medicaid programs.
- Selling off millions of acres of America’s public lands: The Senate bill includes an unprecedented and controversial mandate to sell off over 2 million acres of national forests and other public lands to help fund the tax giveaways that benefit the wealthy.
- Making it easier to buy dangerous firearms and silencers: The House-passed reconciliation bill removes the $200 tax for purchasing a gun silencer by exempting silencers from the National Firearms Act (NFA). The Senate version goes further by also removing short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and other weapons from NFA requirements.
“The House of Representatives’ One Big, Beautiful Act was extreme, but the Senate version newly threatens food and health care for veterans, parents of young kids, and people who live in states that have expanded Medicaid. Millions of working-class Americans will bear the brunt of these cuts and struggle to make ends meet all while the wealthy reap the benefits of this extreme budget bill,” said Lily Roberts, managing director of Inclusive Growth and co-author of the article.
Read the article: “Eight Ways the Senate Budget Bill is More Extreme Than the House-Passed Version” by Lily Roberts, Natasha Murphy, Kyle Ross, Drew McConville, and Nick Wilson
For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sarah Nadeau at [email protected].