GOP Proposes $4.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich While 'Ransacking' Food Stamps and Medicaid

“House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.”

House Republicans unveiled a draft budget resolution on Wednesday that calls for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy while proposing $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs.

Lawmakers are set to mark up the House GOP’s budget blueprint on Thursday as Republicans look to craft a sprawling reconciliation bill that can pass both chambers of Congress with a simple-majority vote. Last week, Senate Republicans released their own budget resolution that proposed significant cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other spending that benefits working-class families.

“Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said Wednesday in response to the House GOP resolution.

“And, they’re paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking healthcare, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on,” Jacquez added.

The new resolution released by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee specifically calls on the chamber’s energy and commerce panel to “submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than” $880 billion over the next decade. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over Medicaid.

The measure also instructs the House Committee on Agriculture, which has jurisdiction over SNAP, to cut no less than $230 billion in spending between fiscal years 2025 and 2034.

“They wanna do a giant tax cut that disproportionately helps the rich while taking away people’s health insurance and food while still adding trillions to the debt,” Bobby Kogan, a former Senate Budget Committee staffer who is now senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote in response to the resolution.

Overall, the House GOP’s budget resolution calls for $2 trillion in cuts to “mandatory spending” over the next decade, taking aim at a category that includes Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SNAP. While Social Security benefits cannot be cut through the reconciliation process, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can.

Congressional Republicans have outlined a number of ways they could slash Medicaid and SNAP, including punitive new work requirements that analysts say would strip benefits from tens of millions of low-income people.

But Families USA executive director Anthony Wright said Wednesday that “we don’t need to know the mechanisms of how Medicaid would be cut to know the impact would be catastrophic: The sheer size of the proposed cuts means millions of Americans losing coverage, hospitals and clinics plunged into budget shortfalls, and healthcare services we all depend on being eliminated.”

“This budget resolution is a five-alarm fire alert for our healthcare,” said Wright. “House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.”

Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the progressive coalition Unrig Our Economy, issued a similarly scathing statement on Wednesday, arguing that House Republicans “showed us that what they value is more tax breaks for greedy billionaires and giant corporations with everyday people paying the price.”

“At a time when everyday Americans face increasingly higher prices, Speaker Johnson and his stooges want to write billionaires a check and force working-class people to foot the bill for their outrageous tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy,” said Christian. “Everyday Americans will not stand for these games—it’s time for Republicans in Congress to end their campaign that puts the ultra-wealthy first on the backs of the rest of us.”

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GOP Proposes $4.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich While ‘Ransacking’ Food Stamps and Medicaid added by Jake Johnson | Common Dreams on Feb 21, 2025
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