Shelley Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., who was raised in North Dakota, protests outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, as House Republicans try to pass the "big beautiful bill." Feist said she's worried about effects on rural hospitals as a result of Medicaid cuts because her parents, in their 80s, depend on rural health care in Minot, North Dakota. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Protesters demonstrated against the “big beautiful bill” outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday as House Republicans whipped votes to get the bill across the finish line and to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Shelley Feist stood on Independence Avenue near the entrance to the House of Representatives holding signs above her head, one reading “Cruel Corrupt Cowards,” the other a Republican elephant with the word “Treason” written on it.

“I think they’re being cruel. I think cruelty is the point,” Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., and originally from North Dakota, told States Newsroom. “It’s also extremely alarming that there’s such cowardice in the GOP.”

The massive budget reconciliation package, passed by Senate Republicans Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance, extends and expands 2017 tax cuts at a cost of roughly $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It also yanks funding from federal food and health safety net programs.

The bill aggressively rolls back clean energy tax credits, as well as raising the nation’s borrowing limit to $5 trillion.

Latest figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the package would add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s deficit over the next decade, when the country is mired in record-breaking debt. That office’s earlier analysis of the House-passed bill found the package would reduce resources for low-income families while padding higher earners.

Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who chaired an hours-long final committee hearing about the bill overnight, said Wednesday the package is an “embodiment of the America First agenda and we would all do well to remember that.”

Medicaid cuts

Top of mind for Feist is the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals and some with disabilities. The Senate version of the package, passed Tuesday, included a  $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, according to the CBO.

“I have parents in North Dakota who are 85 and 86. They already have difficulty seeing their doctor. For every doctor that leaves, he takes on 14 times more burden. Rural health care is already extremely difficult. I would expect there will not be a hospital near where my parents live if this bill is signed into law,” said Feist, whose parents live near Minot.

Rural hospitals rely on Medicaid payments. In a last-minute move before Tuesday’s vote, Senate Republicans doubled a fund to $50 billion to subsidize hospitals that will lose funding. Critics say that amount is not enough to fill the gap.

GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted no after voicing concerns over Medicaid cuts.

Nadine Seiler, 60, of Waldorf, Maryland, stood near a press conference by the Congressional Hispanic Conference protesting the bill. Seiler held a large spray-painted sheet above her head with a message on each side: “Free America from Big Bad Bill” and “Coming Soon Freedom in Name Only.”

“I’m concerned about my fellow citizens who are going to be losing Medicaid, food stamps, human health services. People are going to die,” Seiler said.

“And I know Joni Ernst says that we all gonna die, but we gonna die faster and unnecessarily and I care about that.”

Seiler was referring to Sen. Ernst’s response to her Iowa constituents who expressed concern about Medicaid cuts at a town hall on May 30.

SNAP and ICE

Mark Starr sang a protest song he wrote about the “big beautiful bill” as he played guitar and harmonica outside the Longworth House Office Building Wednesday.

The 39-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, native told States Newsroom he drove to the capital in late April to begin protesting the bill. He said he’s particularly focused on additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contained in the package as well as cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food benefits to low-income households.

“New Mexico is pretty poor, and so if these cuts to SNAP go, kids can go hungry in New Mexico,” Starr said. “It’s just, like, really gonna mess us up, and we’re just one of the many states that will be affected that way.”

New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.

A provision in the bill will shift food assistance costs to state governments for the first time in the federal program’s history. Critics worry that states could tighten eligibility requirements or drop the program because of the financial burden.

The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates 55,000 teens age 14 and up, and adults up to age 64 could lose food assistance in New Mexico because of the bill’s cuts to state work requirement waivers. Children would remain eligible but households would overall see significantly decreased SNAP dollars.

The CBO found in late May that the House-passed bill would result in over 3 million people nationwide losing food assistance.

Starr said he’s also against additional funding provided for immigration enforcement.

“I think they have enough,” he said, pointing to Trump’s visit to a new detention facility in Florida that the White House is touting as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The Senate-approved version includes an additional $45 billion for ICE detention facilities and $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement and deportation, among billions more directed toward the Southern border.

Clean energy to take a hit

Tiernan Sittenfeld, of the League of Conservation Voters, huddled just outside the House with a group wearing t-shirts that read “Hands off our air, land and clean energy.”

Sittenfeld, the organization’s senior vice president of government affairs, argues the rollbacks of clean energy tax credits in the Senate version will “kill clean energy jobs.”

“It is bad for our economy. It’s bad for jobs. It’s going to raise people’s energy bills. And of course, it’s bad for the planet,” she said.

Senate Republicans accelerated the phase-out of some residential, manufacturing and production credits at a faster rate than the House bill. A last-minute change loosened the timeline on some tech-neutral energy credits though, and removed a previously added tax on wind and solar projects.

Industry groups and energy companies small and large have warned early termination of the credits will have a major impact on growth.

The tax credits for solar, wind, batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles, among others, were enacted under Democrats’ own 2022 budget reconciliation bill known as the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The majority of investment in new clean energy manufacturing and production has been concentrated in rural states and states that elected Trump to his second term, according to data collected since 2022 by the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

“Any Republican who votes for this legislation is voting against the interest of their constituents, voting to kill jobs in their district, voting to kill clean energy projects, voting to make their constituents’ energy bills go up,” Sittenfeld said.

Far-right House members who as of Wednesday afternoon were withholding their votes maintain the rollbacks on the clean energy tax cuts, which they’ve dubbed the “green new scam,” do not go far enough.

Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Thune of South Dakota, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Lindsey Graham of South Dakota speak to reporters after passage of their sweeping tax break and spending cut bill on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans approved their signature tax break and spending cuts package Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance, following days of tense, closed-door negotiations that went until the few last minutes of a marathon amendment voting session.

The 51-50 mostly party-line vote sends the legislation back to the House, where GOP leaders hope to clear the bill for President Donald Trump’s signature this week. But frustrations throughout the conference over changes made in the Senate could delay or even block final approval. 

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against approving the legislation over concerns it would not benefit the country’s finances or Republican voters.

Changes made in final negotiations were not immediately clear or publicly available.

Majority Leader John Thune said the passage marked “a historic day.”

“We’re very excited to be a part of something that is going to make America stronger, safer and more prosperous, and it really starts with the agenda that President Trump laid out when he was running last year.

“He talked about modernizing our military, securing our borders, restoring energy dominance in this country, bringing tax relief to working families and low income taxpayers in this country, and doing something about the runaway, spiraling spending and debt,” the South Dakota Republican said minutes after the vote.

“So this was an incredible victory for the American people, and we as a team are delighted to be a part of it.”

The bill now heads back to the House. The chamber’s Committee on Rules is expected to meet Tuesday afternoon, which will be the final stop for the bill before it reaches the House floor.

Thune said he believes Senate Republicans have given the House “a really strong product.”

“I think we took what they sent us and strengthened and improved upon it. And so I’m hopeful that now, when it gets sent over there, as they deliberate about how they want to handle it, we’ll find the votes that are necessary to pass it and want to put it on the president’s desk,” he said.

Trump praised the Senate’s passage on his Truth Social media platform, saying “Almost all of our Great Republicans in the United States Senate have passed our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

He added: “We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional “GRANDSTANDERS” (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk. We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4th vacation.”

Several House conservatives have railed against the Senate version, including Reps. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and others.

House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a joint statement with House Republican leaders saying the chamber “will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”

“Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first,” the Louisiana Republican said in the statement that included House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota and conference chair Lisa McClain of Michigan.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski , whose support had been unclear until the vote, and Majority Whip John Barrasso, of Wyoming, left the chamber to catch an elevator together just after 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

Asked if the bill was in the hands of the parliamentarian, Murkowski quipped, “I think it’s in the hands of the people that operate the coffee machine.”

Barrasso said “Yes” when asked if it would pass this morning.

Murkowski: ‘difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period’

Flooded by reporters after the vote, Murkowski said “we do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination.”

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet, and I would hope that we would be able to actually do what we used to do around here, which is work back and forth in the two bodies to get a measure that’s gonna be better for the people in this country and more particularly, for the people in Alaska,” she said.

“This is probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered, and I’ve been here quite a while, and you all know I’ve got a few battle scars underneath me,” Murkowski added. “But I think I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I’m not done.”

“I am gonna take a nap, though,” she said.

When asked about Murkowski’s decision to vote for the bill, Thune said, “She, as you know, is a very independent thinker and somebody who studies the issues really, really hard and well. And I’m just grateful that at the end of the day, she included what the rest of us did, or at least most of the rest of us did, and that is that this was the right direction for the future of our country.”

Democrats react

Senate Democrats walking off the floor seemed somber, a sentiment that Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said also extended to Republicans after the bill’s passage.

“On the Republican side, when the bill passed, there was a bit of somberness that I don’t think was expected, and that’s because they knew deep in their hearts how bad this bill is for them, their states and the Republican Party,” Schumer said.

“When people start losing their Medicaid, when they start losing their jobs, when their electric bills go up, when their premiums go up, when kids and parents lose SNAP funding, the people of America will remember this vote,” the New York Democrat continued.

Criticism poured in from others as well, including the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which likened the Senate’s bill passage to jumping “off a budget cliff.”

“The level of blatant disregard we just witnessed for our nation’s fiscal condition and budget process is a failure of responsible governing. These are the very same lawmakers who for years have bemoaned the nation’s massive debt, voting to put another $4 trillion on the credit card,” the organization’s president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement.

CRFB estimates the Senate version of the bill would add $600 billion to the national deficit just in 2027.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a calculation Sunday showing the bill would add $3.25 trillion to deficits over 10 years.

Trump weighs in ahead of vote

Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning before leaving for a Florida visit to the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention site that “it’s very complicated stuff” when asked about Senate Republicans’ debate over spending cuts.

“We’re going to have to see the final version. I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts. I don’t like cuts. There are certain things that have been cut, which is good. I think we’re doing well,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to see, it’s some very complicated stuff. Great enthusiasm as you know. And I think in the end we’re going to have it.”

The heart of the nearly 1,000-page legislation extends and expands the 2017 tax law to keep individual income tax rates at the same level and makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The bill would also put in motion some of Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on qualifying tips, overtime or car loan interest, but only for a few years.

And it slashes spending on the Medicaid program for low-income people and some people with disabilities as well as shifting significant costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states for the first time. It also overhauls federal education aid.

It would also bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, including line items for the “golden dome” missile defense system and additional barriers along the southern border.

The measure would provide a substantial funding increase for federal immigration enforcement for detention and removal of people without permanent legal status, aiding the president in carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations.

The Senate version of the bill also would revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act fund, a bipartisan measure championed by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. The fund provides money to victims of certain types of cancer and surviving family members in several states affected by the United States atomic bomb testing program and radioactive waste left behind. 

Uranium miners would also be eligible under the measure. While reviving the fund has received wide bipartisan approval in the Senate, the House has not shown the same support.

The Senate bill would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion, a figure designed to get Congress past next year’s midterm elections before the country would once again bump up against the borrowing limit.

On to the House

House approval is far from guaranteed.

Johnson can only lose four Republicans if all lawmakers in that chamber attend the vote. Several GOP members have voiced frustration with how the Senate has reworked the legislation, signaling an uphill climb for the bill.

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said as he left the Senate cloakroom just after 9:20 a.m. Eastern that lawmakers are “getting closer to a bill signing on July Fourth.”

“If you followed this journey over the last six months, over and over, people said that we could not accomplish a budget (reconciliation bill). We did. They said we would never pass it out of the House. We did. The Senate is going to pass it. The House is going to pass it, and the president’s going to sign it into law,” the Missouri Republican said.

Three amendments succeed

The Senate had adopted three amendments to the bill following an all-night amendment voting session, known as a vote-a-rama.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn was able to remove language from the package that would have blocked state and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for five years if they wanted access to a $500 million fund. That vote was 99-1 with only North Carolina’s Tillis voting to keep the language in the package.

Blackburn said the change was necessary because lawmakers in Congress have “proven that they cannot legislate on emerging technology.”

Senators approved an amendment from Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst by voice vote that would disqualify “anyone making a million dollars or more from being eligible for unemployment income support.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy was able to get an amendment adopted by a voice vote that would move up the date when Medicaid administrators must begin checking the Social Security Administration’s death master file to determine if a new enrollee is alive before adding them to the health program. It was set to begin on Jan. 1, 2028, but will now begin one year earlier.

Senators rejected dozens of amendments offered by both Democrats and Republicans, some of which deadlocked on 50-50 votes. Maine’s Collins and Alaska’s Murkowski broke with their party several times to vote with Democrats.

National private school voucher program

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono tried to eliminate a sweeping private school voucher program that’s baked into the reconciliation package, but that vote failed 50-50. Collins, Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer and Murkowski voted in support.

The original proposal called for $4 billion a year in tax credits beginning in 2027 for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

But the parliamentarian last week deemed the program to not comply with the “Byrd Bath,” a Senate process named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, forcing senators to rework the program.

Details on the finalized version of the program remain unknown as the final bill text has not been released.   

Safety funding for Virginia airport across from D.C.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner tried to add language to the bill that would have increased safety funding for airports near Washington, D.C., and established a memorial for the victims who died in a crash this January. The vote failed on a tied 50-50 vote, with Collins, Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran and Murkowski voting with Democrats in support.

“Colleagues, we all know that on January 29 of this year, 67 individuals lost their lives when a military helicopter and a passenger jet collided near Reagan National Airport. This tragedy underscores the need for more safety improvements at National Airport,” Warner said. “The reconciliation bill increases, actually doubles, the amount of rent that National and Dulles pay the government but doesn’t use any of that money to make those airports and the people who use them any safer.”

He argued there was “no good rationale for increasing those rents and not using them for aviation safety.”

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spoke against Warner’s amendment, saying the rents for the two airports in Virginia near the nation’s capital haven’t been updated in decades.

“The federal government originally calculated the rent in 1987 at $7.5 million dollars, massively below market rates,” Cruz said. “This bill increases that to $15 million, still dramatically below market rates.”

Cruz — chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — said the legislation includes $12.5 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration to “transform the air traffic control system” and said his panel is looking into the collision in order to prevent something similar from happening again. 

Trump budget director’s office targeted

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also got within one vote of having an amendment adopted when he tried to remove a section from the bill that would increase funding for the White House budget office by $100 million.

“This is at a time when (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grants to many of our states have been canceled, grants for law enforcement have been frozen, grants for victims of crimes are on hold,” Van Hollen said. “That is not efficiency. That is creating chaos and uncertainty. And I ask my colleagues, why in the world would we want to send another $100 million to OMB?”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson opposed the efforts, saying “the Office of Management and Budget needs to identify budgeting and accounting efficiencies in the executive branch. They need the resources to do it.”

The amendment was not added to the bill following another tied 50-50 vote with Collins, Murkowski and Paul voting with Democrats in favor.

Had GOP leadership wanted either of those proposals added to the package, they could have had Vance break the tie, but they did not.

Collins loses vote on rural hospital fund

Maine’s Collins tried to get an amendment added to the legislation that would have increased “funding for the rural health care provider fund to $50 billion dollars and expand the list of eligible providers to include not only rural hospitals but also community health centers, nursing homes, ambulance services, skilled nursing facilities and others.”

Collins said the additional $25 billion in funding for the fund would be paid for by “a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate, equal to the pre-2017 rate for individuals with income above $25 million and married couples with income above $50 million.”

Collins’ amendment was subject to a Senate procedural limit known as a budget point of order. She was unable to get the votes needed to waive that on a 22-78 vote.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden spoke against Collins’ proposal, calling it “flawed,” and introduced the budget point of order against her amendment.

“The danger Senate Republicans are causing for rural hospitals is so great, Republicans have had to create a rural hospital relief fund so they can look like they are fixing the problem they are causing,” Wyden said. “It is a Band-Aid on an amputation. It provides just a tiny fraction of the nearly $1 trillion in cuts the bill makes to Medicaid. It would be much more logical to simply not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the first place.”

Collins received a mix of support from Republicans, including West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Utah’s John Curtis, Nebraska’s Fischer, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, Ohio’s Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker, Louisiana’s Kennedy, Kansans Roger Marshall and Moran, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaskans Dan Sullivan and Murkowski and Indiana’s Todd Young.

Also voting to waive the point of order and move forward with the amendment were Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and Virginia’s Warner, all Democrats, and independent Maine Sen. Angus King. 

The U.S. Capitol on Sunday, June 29, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate began floor debate on Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” Sunday afternoon, though there are several steps to go before the legislation can become law, and any one of those could lead to additional GOP opposition — potentially dooming the measure. 

Senators must wrap up an ongoing review of the bill with the parliamentarian to ensure it meets the strict rules for using the reconciliation process and then run the gauntlet during a marathon amendment voting session.

Additional changes to the sweeping tax and spending cuts package, some of which were being worked on as debate took place, need to garner the support of nearly every Republican in Congress. Otherwise, it will never become law.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled during a brief hallway interview there may be enough votes for a new twist in the Medicaid changes in the bill — an amendment reducing in some way how much the federal government spends on Medicaid in states that expanded the program as a result of Democrats’ 2010 health care law. The federal government currently pays 90% of the costs for enrollees in the expansion.

“We’re going to do what we can to support the effort,” Thune said, referring to an amendment offered by Florida Sen. Rick Scott that was not yet public. “It’s great policy and something that there’s a high level of interest in our conference in getting made part of the bill, and obviously scores a substantial savings.”

But Thune, R-S.D., sidestepped a question about whether making that change would create vote-count issues if Republicans in the House with affected districts object, potentially preventing the bill from reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.

“We have had some of these conversations with (Speaker Mike Johnson) and others over there, and then also with our colleagues for some time,” Thune said. “But I think the way this is designed, and the way that Sen. Scott has written it; it should be something that I don’t know how Republicans couldn’t be in favor of what he’s trying to get done here.

“So, you know, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Obviously, we’ve still got to get into the debate over here and get through the amendment process and we’ll see what the fate of the amendment is on the floor.”

Currently 41 states, including the District of Columbia, have adopted the Medicaid expansion, according to the health care research organization KFF.

A Scott spokesperson told States Newsroom they would share his amendment once it was final.

Still fluid

Typically when a major piece of legislation comes to the Senate floor the text is set and amendment debate is closely controlled to ensure delicately negotiated deals don’t crumble in full public view.

That isn’t the case this time around and much could change before senators take a final passage vote later this week, potentially as soon as Tuesday.

GOP leaders using the complex reconciliation process to move their signature policy bill through Congress means every provision must have an impact on federal spending or revenue that is not “merely incidental.”

That involves Democrats and Republicans going before the Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official referee, to argue over dozens of provisions. She then decides if a given policy meets the strict and sometimes murky rules.

That process hadn’t yet wrapped up when debate on the megabill began and is expected to continue as the 20-hour clock ticks down toward a marathon amendment voting session.

Senate bill would add $3.2 trillion to deficits

There are also increasing concerns among Republicans, including those in the House Freedom Caucus, over how the bill will impact the federal government’s balance sheet during the next decade.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced Sunday morning the Senate’s revised tax and spending cuts package will add $3.253 trillion to deficits during the next decade compared to current law.

Trump appeared to try to assuage concerns through a social media post.

“For all cost cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected,” Trump wrote. “Don’t go too crazy! We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.”

The latest score came just hours before senators officially began floor debate on the sweeping package that will extend the 2017 GOP tax law, rework how much state governments have to contribute to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, overhaul several aspects of Medicaid and cut its spending, restructure higher education aid programs and much more.

Senators voted mostly along party lines late Saturday to proceed with the legislation, though leaders had to hold the vote open for more than three hours as they worked to get the votes needed.

Even after taking that crucial procedural step, the bill continued to evolve.

The parliamentarian ruled Sunday morning that another six provisions must be revised to comply with the rules or be removed from the 940-page package. 

One Alaska sweetener knocked out

GOP senators cannot include, or might need to restructure, language meant to bring Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski on board by enhancing the federal matching rate for Medicaid in two states with high poverty guideline levels: Alaska and Hawaii. The program for low-income people and some people with disabilities is run as a state-federal partnership.

Since Hawaii is represented in Congress by a Democratic delegation, the Republican benefit would largely have applied to Alaska’s two GOP senators.

Senate Republicans did receive some good news from the parliamentarian in her latest ruling, which cleared language that will steadily lower the maximum percent states can set for Medicaid provider tax rates from the current 6% to 3.5% in 2032.

The in-the-weeds policy has caused considerable frustration among GOP senators across the political spectrum, who argued a prior version would likely cause financial strain for rural hospitals by beginning the process one year sooner.

Planned Parenthood

The parliamentarian is still reviewing several other policy changes in the bill, including whether Republicans can prevent Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year, effectively blocking beneficiaries from receiving care there at all.

Federal law already bars federal taxpayer dollars from going toward abortions with limited exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient. So this change would prevent Medicaid patients, who may have few other options, from using Planned Parenthood for other types of health care, like annual physicals, contraception and cancer screenings.

A prior version of the bill blocked federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood for the next decade.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, did not immediately respond to a request from States Newsroom about how the rulings might impact the bill going forward.

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement the latest rulings show “that Republican attempts to give away goodies that benefit certain states will not pass muster under Senate rules.”

“Senate Democrats have also successfully challenged a giveaway to Big Pharma, as well as policies that make it harder for seniors and kids to get affordable health care through Medicaid,” Wyden wrote. “Republicans wanted to bring back the health care tactics of yesteryear, like waiting periods, lock-outs and annual limits on care, but Democrats have wrestled these out of the bill. I am disappointed that the Republican rewrite of the provider tax changes will remain in the bill: this policy will force states into devastating cuts to health care that seniors, kids and Americans with disabilities depend on. We will continue to fight any attempt to sneak through harmful health care policies in this morally bankrupt legislation.”

Amendment fights ahead

Republicans hope to pass the entire package before the Fourth of July, though they have several hurdles to jump over before they can meet that goal.

Senate floor debate can last up to 20 hours. After that, senators will begin a marathon amendment voting session where members of each political party can propose changing or removing certain pieces of the legislation.

GOP leaders generally like to avoid public disputes within the party but the rules of reconciliation don’t really allow that and several Republican senators are expected to offer amendments.

There is no time limit or cap on the number of amendments that can be offered during vote-a-rama, so that can last hours or even days in theory.

Whenever Democrats and Republicans decide they’ve debated their last amendment, they’ll move on to voting to approve the Senate’s version of the “big, beautiful bill.”

At least 50 Republicans need to vote to approve the measure, with Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote. More than four GOP senators objecting to the overall bill means it cannot pass as it’s written.

Thom Tillis, Rand Paul

Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against moving forward with debate so it’s likely they will vote against final passage as well. Two more senators deciding not to back the bill would halt its momentum, at least until GOP leaders could make changes to get their votes.

Tillis on Sunday announced he would not run for reelection, after being attacked by Trump for voting against advancing the legislation.

Senate approval of the bill would send it back to the House for a final vote, though centrist and far-right members of the Republican Conference in that chamber have voiced concerns about changes made in the upper chamber.

Johnson, R-La., will need to keep nearly every one of the 220 House GOP lawmakers supportive if that chamber is to send the legislation to  Trump for his signature before Friday. 

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  after a meeting with President Donald Trump. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday told his supporters to call members of Congress and lobby them to support the “big, beautiful bill,” a crucial push with just days to go before a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

Trump’s plea follows several tumultuous days on Capitol Hill as GOP leaders struggled to find consensus on multiple policy disagreements, especially after the parliamentarian ruled core elements of the package don’t meet the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.

Trump during an event in the White House’s East Room that was attended by several GOP lawmakers also cautioned Republicans against voting down the tax and spending cut package.

“We don’t want to have grandstanders,” Trump said. “Not good people. They know who I’m talking about. I call them out. But we don’t need grandstanders. We have to get our country back and bring it back strong.”

Some Republican senators remain optimistic they can work through the weekend and that the House votes will come together next week, despite growing opposition from members in that chamber.

Sen. Eric Schmitt said he doesn’t think the parliamentarian’s rulings will delay the votes “outside the weekend window, which has been the goal all the time.”

“We’re probably voting into the weekend, though. That’s probably my guess — Saturday and I suppose even Sunday — but, that’s the goal, I don’t think that materially changes too much,” the Missouri Republican said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., however, appeared a bit less definite, telling reporters in the afternoon that he didn’t know when the chamber would take the procedural vote that kicks off floor consideration.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said.

Medicaid provisions tossed

Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback when the parliamentarian ruled several changes to Medicaid in the bill don’t comply with the rules, which means billions of dollars in savings are no longer available for the GOP to offset the cost of tax cuts.

Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo. R-Idaho, must rework or completely eliminate nine changes the committee proposed to the health care programs, though more of the panel’s proposals are still under review.

Republicans can no longer reduce the amount of federal matching funds for state governments that use their own tax dollars to provide Medicaid coverage for immigrants in the country without proper documentation.

The GOP bill cannot bar gender-affirming care for Medicaid patients.

And Republicans need to change or scrap a proposal to reduce states’ Medicaid provider tax credits, an issue that is relatively in the weeds of health care policy but has sharply divided the GOP and drawn fierce opposition from states.

The changes or eliminations will have a major impact on how much in savings the GOP tax and spending cut bill will generate during the next decade and will likely make the overall package’s deficit impact higher than before. The legislation is intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts and make spending reductions.

The ruling might make it more difficult for Trump and GOP leaders in Congress to get the votes needed to pass the bill at all, let alone before their self-imposed Fourth of July timeline. Senate GOP leaders had said they wanted to begin procedural votes as soon as Friday.

The measure already had been stuck on Wednesday amid growing disputes over how Medicaid changes will impact rural hospitals and far more.

Democrats to continue scrutinizing bill

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who released the parliamentarian’s rulings, wrote in a statement that Democrats will continue to advocate for removing dozens of proposals from the bill that they believe don’t meet reconciliation rules.

“Republicans are scrambling to rewrite parts of this bill to continue advancing their families lose, and billionaires win agenda, but Democrats stand ready to fully scrutinize any changes and ensure the Byrd Rule is enforced,” Merkley wrote.

A staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the chairman’s plans, said the Finance Committee will “rework certain provisions to address the Byrd guidance and be compliant with reconciliation.”

The Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, includes several guardrails for reconciliation bills.

Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement that the parliamentarian’s ruling will lead to “more than $250 billion in health care cuts removed from the Republicans’ big bad bill.

“Democrats fought and won, striking health care cuts from this bill that would hurt Americans’ walking on an economic tightrope. This bill is rotten to its core, and I’ll keep fighting the cuts in this morally bankrupt bill until the end.”

The parliamentarian is still deciding whether several health provisions meet reconciliation rules, including language that would block all Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from visiting the organization for routine health services.

Federal law already bars funding for abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient.

The parliamentarian will also decide later whether Republicans’ bill can block the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing a Biden-era rule that would require nursing homes to have a nurse working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Higher ed provisions axed

The parliamentarian also struck down several attempts from congressional Republicans to overhaul the higher education system.

GOP lawmakers cannot streamline student loan repayment options for current borrowers to just a standard repayment plan or an income-driven repayment plan, making such restrictions apply to only new borrowers.

Republicans have to nix a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are for-profit and not accredited.

The parliamentarian scrapped a proposal that would have barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The federal program eliminates remaining debt for borrowers when meeting certain requirements, including working for a qualified employer within the government or nonprofit sector.

The parliamentarian rejected GOP lawmakers’ proposal to end federal student aid eligibility for certain immigrants who are not U.S. citizens.

‘Too many Medicaid cuts’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the parliamentarian’s ruling on the Medicaid provider tax rate will give lawmakers “a chance to get it right.”

“This is a chance for the Senate to fix a problem that they created and not defund rural hospitals,” Hawley said, later adding he supports the House language that would freeze the rate at 6% instead of decreasing it to 3.5% over several years. 

Hawley said hours before Trump’s event that he expects the president to get more involved in negotiations now that he’s back from a NATO conference in Europe and said Trump was in a “terrific mood” during a recent phone call.

“I think he wants this done. But he wants it done well. And he does not want this to be a Medicaid cuts bill,” Hawley said. “He made that very clear to me. He said this is a tax cut bill, it’s not a Medicaid cuts bill. I think he’s tired of hearing about all these Medicaid cuts, you know. As am I. It’s because there are too many Medicaid cuts.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy early Thursday night called on leaders to put the House’s language regarding Medicaid back into the bill, wiping out changes made by the Finance Committee.

“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided. The Senate bill cuts Medicaid too much,” the influential chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote in a social media post. “I agree with President Trump, the House version is better.”

SNAP cuts

The Agriculture Committee also is reworking parts of its bill, some being closely watched by states, to meet the rules that govern reconciliation.

Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said he expects to hear from the parliamentarian before the end of Thursday about whether a revised state cost share provision for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that’s based on error rate payments will be in the final bill.

“It was thrown out the first time, so we actually gave her revised text. If she rules the revised text is fine, then we’ll release it,” Boozman said.

The committee released a statement later in the day announcing the parliamentarian had cleared the revised state cost share for SNAP that’s based on a state’s error payment rate.

States that have SNAP error payment rates higher than 6% will have to contribute some of the cost of the program. The updated proposal will give states the option of choosing between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 to determine their match, which will begin during fiscal 2028. After that, a state’s match will be determined by its error payment rate for the last three fiscal years. 

State and local tax, ‘revenge tax’

Senate Republicans also remained stuck on finding a deduction level for state and local tax, or SALT, that passes muster with House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states.

The House version would allow taxpayers making under $500,000 to deduct up to $40,000 in SALT from their federal tax bill. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000. The deduction cap phases down for higher earners.

Senate Republicans and the White House sought to lower the income threshold but were shot down Thursday by House Republicans, according to multiple reports.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the lead negotiator on SALT for Senate Republicans, said he remained optimistic.

“We’re gonna be in a good spot. We’re gonna find a landing spot,” Mullin said.

A Senate Finance Committee spokesperson declined to comment on current negotiations, including any proposed income level changes.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also weighed in on another tax provision: the so-called “revenge tax” on investments from countries whose trade policies the president views as unfair to U.S. businesses.

Bessent asked lawmakers to remove the up to 20% tax from the mega-bill following an agreement made with G7 partners, he wrote on social media.

“This understanding with our G7 partners provides greater certainty and stability for the global economy and will enhance growth and investment in the United States and beyond,” Bessent said.

The retaliation tax would have raised roughly $116 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Timing on votes

Republican lawmakers don’t have much time left to rework all of the ineligible provisions, clear them with the parliamentarian, read through final bill text, slog through a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate and then move the bill through the House before their self-imposed deadline.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing before Trump’s event that the president is “adamant” Congress must pass the “big, beautiful bill” within the next week, despite the latest ruling.  

“We expect that bill to be on the president’s desk for signature by July Fourth. I know there was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian this morning,” Leavitt said. “Look, this is part of the process, this is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate. But the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters about the Republican budget reconciliation package at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans were scrambling Tuesday to restructure several proposals in the “big, beautiful bill” that don’t meet their chamber’s strict rules for passing a reconciliation package, while GOP lawmakers on the other side of the Capitol warned those changes may doom its passage in the House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he and several others are working on a way to bolster rural hospitals, which could experience financial strain as a result of the various changes to Medicaid and other health care programs in the package.

“We are working on a solution for rural hospitals and that’s something that’s been in the works now for several days in response to a number of concerns that our colleagues have mentioned in ensuring that the impact on rural hospitals be lessened, be mitigated,” Thune said. “And I think we’re making good headway on that solution.”

Thune said GOP lawmakers shouldn’t let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,” though he predicted there “could be” two or three Republicans who vote against the package.

“We’ve got a lot of very independent-thinking senators who have reasons and things that they’d like to have in this bill that, in their view, would make it stronger,” Thune said. “But at the end of the day this is a process whereby not everybody is going to get what they want. And we have to get to 51 in the United States Senate.”

More objections to Medicaid cuts

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been vocal about Medicaid changes and rural hospitals, said he had “no details whatsoever” about the rural hospital fund or how it would work if it’s added to the bill.

But he said he’s not going to support a bill that takes away working people’s health care.

“We’ve got 1.3 million people on Medicaid in Missouri, hundreds of thousands of kids. That’s 21% of my population. Most of these people are working people. They’re on Medicaid, not because they’re sitting around at home; they’re on Medicaid because they don’t have a job that gives them health care and they cannot afford to buy it on the exchange,” Hawley said. “They don’t want to be, but it’s their only option. And I just think it’s wrong to take away health care coverage from those folks. Now if they’re not working, then sure, they should be.”

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she had a “lengthy discussion” with her home state’s hospital association earlier in the day.

“This has a lot of impacts and we want to make sure we have a lot of rural hospitals. That’s why this rural hospital fund idea is developing,” Capito said. “I don’t think anything is set yet but that is an issue. I think Medicaid, we need to preserve it for the people it’s intended for and get rid of the people who don’t deserve it and don’t qualify and are bilking the system.”

Capito said she hadn’t yet formed an opinion on the rural hospital fund since there isn’t yet a formal proposal written down.

Public lands

In one major development, the Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that a controversial provision championed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee to mandate the sale of at least 2 million acres of public lands in 11 Western states did not comply with the chamber’s rules for reconciliation.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has said the provision would free up land to build new housing. But Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states strongly opposed it.

Lee said on social media Monday evening that he was working to rewrite the proposal to comply with reconciliation rules. A spokesperson for his office did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

SNAP cost-sharing under debate

In another turn of events, Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., earlier Tuesday had announced the panel successfully reworked a provision that would transfer some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments.

But a spokesperson for the panel said later that the parliamentarian actually has not yet made a ruling. The spokesperson said “we’ve gotten some clarification from leadership and it’s steering in the direction it would be compliant but not official.”

Boozman earlier had said his proposal would improve SNAP. “Our commonsense approach encourages states to adopt better practices, reduce error rates, be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, and prioritize the resources for those who truly need it,” Boozman wrote in a statement.

The new language, if accepted, would give states the option of selecting fiscal year 2025 or 2026 as the year that the federal government uses to determine its payment error rate for SNAP, which will then impact how much of the cost the state has to cover starting in fiscal year 2028. Afterward, a state’s payment error rate will be calculated using the last three fiscal years.

Any state with an error rate higher than 6% will have to cover a certain percentage of the cost of the nutrition program for lower income households.

Rushing toward deadline

The internal debates among lawmakers about how to rewrite major pieces of the tax and spending cuts package have led to a rushed feeling among Republican leaders, who have repeatedly promised to approve the final bill before the Fourth of July — an exceedingly tight timeline.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press conference shortly after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday that he’s hopeful the final bill that comes out of the Senate won’t make too many changes to what the House approved earlier this year.

“I remain very optimistic that there’s not going to be a wide chasm between the two products — what the Senate produces and what we produce,” Johnson said. “We all know what the touchpoints are and the areas of greatest concern.”

Republicans, he said, know they need to focus on preserving a fragile compromise on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, that helps offset the cost of living in some higher-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York.

A deal Johnson brokered with GOP lawmakers in the SALT Caucus has been significantly rewritten in the Senate, but is expected to move back toward the House version, though not entirely.

Johnson also mentioned GOP efforts to roll back certain clean-energy provisions that Democrats approved and President Joe Biden signed into law in their signature climate change, health care and tax package, called the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in 2022.

“We’ve got to get the SALT negotiation number right. We’ve got to make sure the IRA subsidies are handled in an appropriate manner,” Johnson said. “Look, you’ve got a number of provisions.”

Johnson said he expects the Senate to vote on its final bill by Friday or Saturday and that he’s told House lawmakers to “keep your schedules flexible” on being in Washington, D.C., for a final House vote. 

Trump goads Republicans

President Donald Trump sought to spur quick approval of a final bill, posting on social media that GOP lawmakers should get the package to him as soon as possible.

“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK. Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE. Everyone, most importantly the American People, will be much better off thanks to our work together. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said there are concerns among his fellow Republicans about all of the provisions that must be removed or significantly reworked to meet the complex rules for moving a reconciliation bill through that chamber.

“Every time something comes out that we’re using as a pay for, it takes the deficit reduction down. And they’ve taken out nearly $300 billion so far. We’ve got to make that up,” Mullin said after leaving the closed-door House GOP meeting. “The Senate can’t come in below the House version as far as deficit reduction. So that makes it difficult.”

Mullin, who has been acting as his chamber’s top negotiator with SALT Republicans in the House, told reporters he expects the deduction for state and local taxes to remain at the $40,000 level negotiated in the House. But said the Senate will likely rewrite the $500,000 income ceiling to qualify for the tax deduction.

“I think 40 is a number we’re going to land on,” Mullin said. “It’s the income threshold that’s in negotiations.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said “most of us would like to make it zero.”

“I hate the idea of $40,000 but if that’s what it takes to pass the bill, I probably could do it. I would like to maybe find some other tweaks to it, somehow, like changing the income levels,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters he expects a resolution on SALT in the next 24 to 48 hours.

“I had a very successful lunch meeting with the senators. I think that we are on track,” Bessent said.

The ‘red line’ in the House

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters following the closed-door meeting that Senate leaders shouldn’t assume whatever they pass will be accepted by the House.

“I’ve been very clear about where my red line is. So, you know, we’ll let this process play out,” Lawler said. “I think the Senate should recognize the only number that matters is 218, and 50 plus 1. That’s it. And how do you get there?”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, so leadership cannot lose more than four votes and still approve the package, given that Democrats are universally opposed.

In the House, GOP leaders have 220 seats and need nearly every one of their members to support whatever the Senate sends back across the Capitol for it to make it to the president’s desk before their self-imposed deadline.

In addition to the SALT tax compromise, Lawler said he has concerns about how the Senate has changed other provisions, including those addressing Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

“Yeah, there are a number of concerns about decisions that they’re making,” Lawler said. “And obviously, the bill on their side is not final, so we’ll see where it goes.”

Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that crafted the tax provisions in the reconciliation bill, stood by the House’s version of the Opportunity Zone Tax Incentives. The House version extends the incentive from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a year, while the Senate’s version makes it permanent.

The Opportunity Zone Tax Incentive was pushed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott during the first Trump administration, which aimed to create tax cuts for businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, but it had mixed results.

“The tax bill that we’re going to deliver is gonna deliver for working families, small businesses and farmers,” Smith said.

Thumbs down from one House Republican

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., posted on social media that he doesn’t support how the Senate has changed the bill and that he would seek to block it from becoming law. 

“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities—it doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit – taking us even further from a balanced budget.

“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO.”

Rattlesnakes and the Senate

West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice told reporters that it’s important for the Senate to take its time in its changes to the reconciliation package and that GOP lawmakers need to be patient.

“If you’re walking through the woods and you look right over there at that wall and there’s a rattlesnake all curled up there and everything, what do you do?” Justice asked. “Most people just jump and take off runnin’, well … rattlesnakes run in pairs and if you just jump left or right or behind, that one can hurt you right there.”

Rattlesnakes are typically solitary creatures, but new research has shown that rattlesnakes are more social than previously thought.

Justice said the best course of action when dealing with a rattlesnake, or two, is to stand still for a moment.

“Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you, and then decide which way you’re going,” he said. “That’s what I think we need to do (in the Senate).”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, participates in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on May 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee says he will revamp his controversial proposal to require the sales of vast acres of federal lands in the West so it can be included in Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax and spending cut package.

Lee will be seeking approval for his revised plan from the Senate parliamentarian, who will decide if the provision complies with the chamber’s strict rules for the fast-track procedure Republicans are using to pass their bill. An earlier version of Lee’s plan was dropped from the measure.

Lee, a Utah Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote on X on Monday night that he would alter the proposal to include only Bureau of Land Management land within 5 miles of a population center and exempt U.S. Forest Service lands altogether.

The amended version would also create “freedom zones” and protect “our farmers, ranchers, and recreational users,” Lee said.

It was not immediately clear what either point would mean and legislative text of the proposal was not publicly available Tuesday. A spokesperson for the committee Lee leads did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

The original version of the proposal would have mandated the sale of at least 2 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land in 11 Western states. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that language did not comply with the Senate’s rules for budget reconciliation, according to Senate Budget Committee ranking Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Budget reconciliation is the procedure Republicans are using to pass the package that contains most of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy priorities, including extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

The process allows passage with only a simple majority in the Senate instead of the usual 60 votes but comes with strict rules that every provision has a substantial impact on the federal deficit and relates to spending and taxes.

Polarizing provision

Lee’s social media post emphasized his goal was to expand housing supply by making public lands available for new construction.

“Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up,” Lee wrote. “We need to change that.”

Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — strongly opposed the measure, seeing it as a one-time sell-off of public lands used by hunters, hikers, ranchers and other users of public lands.

The provision “would have gutted America’s public lands and auctioned them off to the highest bidder, in yet another bid to benefit the wealthy,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.

“Republicans tried to rip away hundreds of millions of acres of public land—not to help families, not to solve real problems—but to hand yet another gift to the wealthy and well-connected,” he added. “It was outrageous, it was shameless, and it would have forever changed the character of the country. Senate Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep public lands in public hands because these lands belong to everyone—not just the privileged few.”

A similar provision was removed from the House’s version of the reconciliation bill in the face of heated opposition from Western Republicans led by Montana U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke.

The former Interior secretary said last week he remained firmly opposed to the Senate version of the bill that included Lee’s proposal.

“I have said from day one I would not support a bill that sells public lands,” he wrote on X. “I am still a no on the senate reconciliation bill that sells public lands. We did our job in the House. Let’s get it finished.”

Other energy provisions stripped

Merkley reported the Senate parliamentarian also ruled several other provisions of the Energy Committee’s section of the package to be out of compliance with the “Byrd Rule,” which governs what can be included in a reconciliation bill.

Among the provisions the parliamentarian removed were items that would have waived environmental review requirements for offshore oil and gas development, mandated approval of a controversial mining road in Alaska, required annual lease sales for geothermal energy lease sales while changing how geothermal royalties are calculated and allowed natural gas exporters to pay a fee to have projects exempted from environmental requirements.

Other provisions in the committee’s reconciliation instructions were still under review Tuesday, Merkley said.

In a statement, Merkley said he would continue to lead Democrats’ campaign to strip provisions from the GOP bill.

“Democrats will not stand idly by while Republicans attempt to circumvent the rules of reconciliation in order to sell off public lands to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” he said. “We will make sure the Byrd Rule is followed and review any changes Republicans attempt to make to the bill.”

At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, on April 14, 2012, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats have succeeded in eliminating more than a dozen policy changes from Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” after successfully arguing before the chamber’s parliamentarian that the elements didn’t comply with the strict rules that go along with writing a budget reconciliation bill.

Removed is language that would have transferred some of the cost of running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments, potentially leaving states on the hook for billions in added spending on the food aid program for lower-income people.

Democrats also fended off a proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fields complaints on banking and other financial institutions, and another that sought to bar federal district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. 

Among the contested items that remained, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley announced in a social media post that his years-long effort to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Fund, or RECA, passed what’s known on Capitol Hill as the “Byrd bath” test.

“Terrific news for Missouri, radiation survivors, and MAHA: RECA has passed the ‘Byrd bath’ – Democrats did not strip it – and will be in the final bill,” Hawley wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again slogan. “Huge step forward #MAHA.”

Democrats to continue challenges

Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., has cheered many of the parliamentarian’s rulings, though Republican committee chairs say they’ll look for ways to rewrite the various proposals.

“Today, we were advised by the Senate Parliamentarian that several more provisions in this Big Beautiful Betrayal of a bill will be subject to the Byrd Rule — and Democrats plan to challenge every part of this bill that hurts working families and violates this process,” Merkley wrote in a statement released Saturday night. “Republicans’ relentless attack on middle class families in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires is a slap in the face to working families everywhere, and Democrats are fighting back.”  

The changes could create several issues for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and eventually for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who need nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress to vote for the sweeping tax and spending cuts package in order for it to become law.

The House voted 215-214 to approve its version of the bill in May, but since the Senate is making substantial changes, the House will have to vote on the measure again before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature. GOP leaders hope to complete all that before the Fourth of July.

Republicans are using reconciliation, instead of moving the bill through the regular legislative process, to avoid needing Democratic votes to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

But the lower threshold for passing a reconciliation bill comes with several requirements, including that all of the proposals in the package have an impact on spending or revenues that’s not “merely incidental.”

The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official scorekeeper who holds a detailed understanding of the rules and procedures, examines each of those policies and hears from both Republicans and Democrats before issuing the rulings.

The Byrd bath began last week behind closed doors and will continue for at least several more days. Once it concludes, Senate GOP leaders can move the bill to the floor, where members of both parties can call for votes on as many amendments as they want.

SNAP program

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., released a written statement defending his committee’s bill after the parliamentarian ruled several provisions must go to comply with the rules.

“To rein in federal spending and protect taxpayer dollars the committee is pursuing meaningful reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to improve efficiency, accountability and integrity,” Boozman wrote. “We are continuing to examine options that comply with Senate rules to achieve savings through budget reconciliation to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

The parliamentarian ruled the committee erred in including language that would have shifted some of the cost of the SNAP program to state governments if they didn’t meet an efficiency benchmark before 2028.

A proposal to eliminate SNAP eligibility for “immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents, with certain exceptions,” was also determined not to comply with the rules, according to a press release from Merkley.

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, ranking member on the committee, wrote the parliamentarian’s ruling “made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts.

“While Republicans’ proposed cuts to SNAP will still be devastating to families, farmers, and independent grocers across the country, we will keep fighting to protect families in need. Instead of a rushed partisan process, Republicans should work with us to lower costs for Americans and pass a bipartisan Farm Bill that works for all farmers and rural America.”

Consumer financial agency victory for Dems

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress established in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also doesn’t comply with the rules, under the parliamentarian’s ruling.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the GOP’s proposal for the CFPB represented “a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”

But committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., wrote in a separate statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”

Scott listed provisions that he said will remain.

“As it stands now, the Banking Committee’s reconciliation provisions will delay the implementation of Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which reduces CFPB spending and protects the privacy and data of small business owners; rescind unused funds earmarked for green initiatives to give HUD discretion in funding critical housing programs; and save taxpayer dollars by eliminating an unnecessary reserve fund at the SEC,” Scott wrote. “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”

Judges and injunctions

The parliamentarian told lawmakers that various elements of the Judiciary Committee’s bill don’t comply with the rules, including an attempt to block federal district court judges from issuing nationwide preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders.

The issue has become a thorn in Trump’s side during the past few months as he’s watched the courts block several of his executive orders and other unilateral administration actions.

The Judiciary Committee’s reconciliation bill cannot block the Department of Justice from awarding Byrne JAG and COPS grants to “sanctuary cities.” The bill also can’t send funding to local and state governments for the purpose of “apprehending aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, did not respond to a request for comment, but a committee spokesperson wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “Democrats are clinging to their radical open borders legacy by fighting to keep criminal migrants in the United States.

“Republicans are committed to enforcing the rule of law, and will continue using all available avenues to secure our borders, clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policies and ensure courts operate according to lawful and constitutional standards.”

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, ranking member on the committee, issued a statement calling the bill’s policies “an attempted power grab by our Republican colleagues that we would not stand for.”

“Here’s what Senate Republicans attempted to sneak into their so-called Big, Beautiful Bill: a provision intended to limit the ability of individuals and organizations to challenge lawless Trump Administration executive actions by putting those potential plaintiffs on the hook for millions of dollars; and a provision conditioning grant eligibility on a state or locality’s compliance with federal immigration policies,” Durbin wrote.

Artificial intelligence and states

The parliamentarian didn’t, however, remove all of the proposals contested by Democrats.

Language that would prevent local and state governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade if those jurisdictions want to receive money from a $500 million fund does meet the reconciliation requirements and can remain in the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s bill.

But that doesn’t mean the provision will stay in the bill moving forward, since several GOP lawmakers have expressed concern about potentially tying the hands of local and state governments when it comes to AI.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a social media post after she voted for the House’s bill that she had no idea about the AI provision. That chamber’s package barred state and local AI regulation for a decade without tying it to any funding stream.

“We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous,” Greene wrote. “This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.

“When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it.”

Kristen Crowell, executive director of Fair Share America, speaks Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the first stop for Fair Share America's bus campaign to oppose the Republican budget reconciliation bill currently in the U.S. Senate. (Photo courtesy of Fair Share America)

Over the next three weeks, a band of advocates in a bright green bus is traveling across the U.S. with a message aimed at members of Congress — and at the voters who live in their districts.

To the voters, the message is that they will be hurt by the Republican mega-bill taking shape in Washington — a bill that would extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 that primarily benefit the wealthy and pay for them by slashing Medicaid and other federal programs that critics of the measure argue broadly benefit the public.

To U.S. senators and representatives, the message is: Vote against the measure, or face the wrath of voters in 2026.

The bus trip was launched by  Fair Share America, a coalition of groups focused on  beating back attempts to extend the 2017 tax cuts, one of the signature pieces of legislation from President Donald Trump’s first term. The organization is made up of unions, organizations favoring progressive taxation, and progressive social justice and policy groups.

Fair Share America’s executive director is Kristen Crowell, who lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. In 2022 she helped lead a campaign in Massachusetts when voters approved a constitutional amendment that created a 4% surtax on earned income over $1 million.

“That increase is now generating $3 billion annually that is dedicated for education and transportation,” Crowell told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The Boston Globe reported that the campaign to pass the Massachusetts “millionaires’ tax” raised $27 million, nearly twice as much as the $14 million raised by business-backed opponents of the measure. Crowell said the campaign succeeded by appealing to voters on the issue of fairness.

“We know that when we ask the wealthy to pay a little bit more, to pay their fair share, we can fund the investments that our neighbors and families and communities deserve — and really importantly, right now in this moment, they need in order to to get ahead,” Crowell said in an interview.

Opposition group launched in 2024

The 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of this year. With that date on the calendar, Fair Share America launched in September 2024 to oppose renewing them.

“We started organizing before we knew the outcome of the election and were handed a different reality than we might have hoped for,” Crowell said.

Since then, the organization has helped “lead the pushback at the state level to make sure that constituents and the public understand what’s happening behind closed doors in Washington, D.C., and to really bring the fight to key districts and geographies across the country where lawmakers, in particular the GOP members of Congress, have shut out their constituents,” she said.

The bus trip started on Saturday in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., stopped in Philadelphia on Sunday and will hit four more cities across Pennsylvania on Monday. Stops in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa follow. After that, the bus will double back on its route for three Wisconsin stops, in Racine and Oshkosh on Monday, June 30, and La Crosse on July 1.

The schedule will continue through the middle of July, stopping in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada before concluding in Bakersfield, California on July 14.

The tour isn’t the start of the organization’s campaign. Fair Share America and its partners with other advocacy groups have been holding town hall meetings in 33 states across the country, Crowell said — including one in Racine in April that featured former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley.

Crowell was at the Racine event, to which the local member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) was invited but didn’t show up. “Over 200 people came [from] across the political spectrum.” Crowell said.

At that town hall and other such events across the country, she’s seen energetic opposition to the new Trump administration as well as the priorities of the current Congress, she said.

“Fair Share America’s not speaking to one side of the aisle vs. the other,” Crowell said. “This is a populist moment.”

Public opposition to budget bill

A poll on behalf of three of the coalition’s member groups found that even before they were given information about details of the GOP budget reconciliation bill, the American voters surveyed had a negative opinion of it.

According to the pollsters 38% of those surveyed said they support the bill, 46% said they oppose it and 16% said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.

Fewer than one-third of voters surveyed — 30% — have heard a lot about the bill. Another 40% have heard “just some” about it, and the remaining 30% said they’ve heard little or nothing about the measure.

The more people heard, however, the less they liked it, according to the report from the polling firm, Hart Research. Opposition increased among all groups after pollsters told people about various details — its changes to Medicaid and to SNAP federal nutrition aid, for example.

“By being in the rooms and town halls and knocking on doors here in Wisconsin, that is what we are hearing and seeing,” Crowell said.

With its slogan, “Stop the billionaire giveaway,” Fair Share America’s bus tour aims to amplify the bill’s cuts to programs that benefit the public and to center the message that its tax cuts favor the wealthy.

Congressional Republicans “have not engaged with their constituents” in Wisconsin and elsewhere about the reconciliation bill, Crowell said. Fair Share America’s goal is to break down the details in terms that people will understand and respond to.

“When you tell them what’s at stake, what’s coming down, they are furious and they want to know how to get in the fight,” Crowell said. “They want to know how to organize their three or four neighbors. So it is incumbent on all of us to shed light on the horrors of this reconciliation bill and do everything it takes to get the word out.”

Funding values and priorities

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has said he opposes the bill and has threatened to vote against it, criticizing it for not making deeper federal spending cuts. 

While that’s the opposite of Fair Share America’s agenda, “voting ‘No’ is voting ‘No’ at the end of the day,” Crowell said.

She is skeptical that Johnson will follow through on his threat, however.

“When push comes to shove, I don’t think Sen. Johnson is going to cross the White House or cross GOP leadership. I expect him to fall in line,” she said. “But we’re here to push back and say, ‘Absolutely not. We will hold you to that No vote and we do want you to understand what the stakes are for your constituents.’”

While the campaign’s goal is to stop the bill, there’s a second message regardless of the outcome, Crowell said.

“We are building a movement that is strong and durable and it crosses partisan lines,” she said. “If they in fact do go ahead and pass this, there will be hell to pay for those members who abandoned  and threw their constituents and their communities under the bus.”

Crowell said her more than two decades of activism started when, as a working mother, she opposed Milwaukee public school budget cuts. Her daughter, who was in kindergarten then, is now 29.

She went on to organize with “We Are Wisconsin,” the grass-roots coalition that sprang up in reaction to Act 10 — the 2011 law stripping most collective bargaining rights from most public employees, introduced and signed by Scott Walker in his first term as governor.

Act 10 was billed as a “budget repair bill.” Crowell said that working against it she saw clearly the connection between government budgets and policy.

“If progressives want to really win … and fund the things that we care about, we have to compete for what happens in the budget process,” Crowell said. “We have to compete for a fair and just tax code. We have to compete for the revenue that funds all of the issues that we care about, whether that’s health care or climate or education or child care.”

A budget “can be used either to fund our priorities and reflect our values or attack the things that we deeply care about,” Crowell said. With the federal budget reconciliation bill, “we’re watching the GOP members of Congress do exactly that — looking to further harm our communities through advancing this budget.”

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Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

After many delays, the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee met Thursday evening to approve its plan for K-12 education spending that included a 5% increase to special education funding for schools and its $1.3 billion tax plan that targets retirees and middle-income earners. 

Lawmakers on the powerful budget-writing committee went back and forth for nearly three hours about the plans with Republicans saying they made significant investments in education and would help Wisconsinites while Democrats argued the state should do more for schools. 

Over $220 million for special education, no additional general aid for schools

The committee approved a total of about $336 million total in new general purpose revenue for Wisconsin’s K-12 schools — only about 10% of Gov. Tony Evers’ proposed $3.1 billion in new spending.

Special education costs will receive the majority of the allocation with an additional $220 million that will be split between the general special education reimbursement and a subset of high-cost special education services. 

The special education reimbursement funding includes $77.2 million in the first year of the budget, which will bring the rate at which the state reimburses school districts to an estimated 35%, and $151 million in the second year bringing the rate to an estimated 37.5%. It’s well below the $1.13 billion or 60% reimbursement for special education that Evers had proposed and that advocates had said was essential to place school districts back on a sustainable funding path. 

Education advocates spent the last week lobbying for the additional funding — and warning lawmakers about the financial strain on districts and the resources the students could lose. Ahead of the meeting Thursday, Democrats and a coalition of Wisconsin parents of students with disabilities spoke to the urgent need for additional investment in the state’s general special education reimbursement rate. 

“Everywhere we’ve gone in the state of Wisconsin, whether it’s rural school districts, urban school districts, whether it’s school districts that have passed referendums and those that haven’t, they all say the same thing — 60% primary special education funding is absolutely necessary for our schools to succeed,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said at the press conference.  “You can see that we have had a cycle of referendum throughout Wisconsin, and that cycle has to end.”

The special education reimbursement peaked at 70% in 1973, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. After falling to a low of 24.9% in 2015-16, the state’s share of special education costs has been incrementally increasing with some fluctuations. 

The Republican proposal represents, at maximum, about a 5% increase to the current rate by the second year. According to budget papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the investment lawmakers made last session was meant to bring the rate to 33.3%, but because it is a sum certain rate — meaning there was only a set amount of money set aside, regardless of expanding costs  — the actual rates have been 32.4% in 2023-24 and an estimated 32.1% for 2024-25.

Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting that he would tell advocates who wanted the 60% rate that the state budget has to be “right-sized” and “affordable.”

“The governor’s budget has always [had] reckless spending that the state can’t afford, and so we’re choosing to make key investments and priorities, and these investments today will be some of … the largest investments you’ll see in the budget,” Born said. 

The committee also added $54.5 million to bring the additional reimbursement rate for a small number of high-cost special education services to 50% in the first year of the budget and 90% in the second year. The high-cost special education program provides additional aid when costs exceed $30,000 for a single student in one year. According to DPI, in 2025 only 3% of students with disabilities fell in the high-cost special education category.

In 2024-25, the program only received $14.5 million from the state. Evers had proposed the state invest an additional $18.5 million. 

Republicans on the committee insisted that they were trying to compromise and making a significant investment in schools — noting that education likely will continue being the state’s top expenditure in the budget. Meanwhile, Democrats spoke extensively about the need for higher rates of investment, read messages from superintendents and students in their districts and said Republicans were not doing what people asked for. 

“High needs special education funding only reaches about 3% of Wisconsin’s special education students,” Rep. Deb Andraca said. “You’re getting a couple good talking points, but you’re not going to get the kinds of public schools that Wisconsin kids deserve.” 

During the committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) criticized Democrats for saying they would vote against the proposals. He said Democrats would vote against any proposal if it isn’t what they want. 

“If we all voted no, we would return to base funding, which was good enough by the way for the governor last budget because he signed it,” Bradley said. “There would be no increases, but instead we’ve introduced a motion which will increase funding.”

McGuire responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for a proposal that is “condemning the state to continuing the cycle of referendum,” which he said Republicans are doing by minimally increasing the special education reimbursement rate and not investing any additional money in general aid. 

“Wisconsinites across the state are having to choose between raising their own property taxes” and the schools, McGuire said. 

The Kenosha School District, which is in McGuire’s legislative district, recently failed to pass referendum to help reduce a budget deficit. School leaders had said a significant increase in the special education reimbursement would prevent the district from having to seek a referendum again.

“They had a $19 million budget gap, and if this state went to 60% special education funding, you know roughly where we promised we would be, that would’ve gone down to $6 million,” McGuire said, “…$13 million of those dollars are our responsibility. That’s been our failing, and we should live up to that.”

“What are we arguing about? We’re putting more money in,” Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) said.“I would think that when this gets to his desk, Evers would sign this because it is a bigger increase than any of what he proposed while he was state superintendent.”

McGuire said the investment in the high-cost special education is also good, but only applies to a small number of schools and students. 

“You know, what would benefit all school districts in the state and will benefit all students who need special education? The primary special education reimbursement rate, which you put at 37.5[%], but everyone says should be at 60[%].” McGuire said. “I don’t think this is your intention, but I don’t believe that we should be exchanging children who need our assistance for other children who need our assistance. Why can’t we just help all of the kids who need our help?”

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said that the increase for high-cost special education will have a significant impact on some schools, especially smaller ones, and students, even if it’s not many of them.

“To get 90% for them is huge for any of our rural districts. One child, which deserves an education, can break the bank for our small districts,” Kurtz said. “Is it perfect? No, it’s not perfect, but we have to stay within our means.” 

Committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) echoed Kurtz’s comments saying that there will be “a lot of districts that are going to be awful happy about that.” 

“They’ve been worried about sometimes, a student moves into the district, and it’s of incredibly high, high needs,” Marklein said.

The committee also declined to include additional general aid for school districts. Republicans on the committee said  there was already a $325 per pupil increase to districts’ revenue limits built into the budget from last session due to Evers’ partial veto. The increase gives districts the option to raise property taxes, though it doesn’t require them to, and does not include state funding for the increase.

Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) told lawmakers not to forget about the increase, saying the “insulting part about that is that everyone gets it.

There are schools that don’t need that,” Quinn said. “72% of my districts spend less than [the schools of] my Democratic colleagues on this panel.” 

School Administrators Alliance Executive Director Dee Pettack, Wisconsin Association of School Boards Executive Director Dan Rossmiller, Southeast Wisconsin School Alliance Executive Director Cathy Olig and Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance Executive Director Jeff Eide said in a joint letter reacting to the proposal that lawmakers failed to hear the voices school leaders, parents and community and business leaders.

“While the $325 revenue limit authority exists, it is not funded by the state. Instead, it is entirely borne by local property taxpayers. In addition, school districts will not see the requested support in special education,” the leaders stated. “Because of the lack of state support in these two critical areas, school districts will be left with no choice but to ask their local taxpayers to step up and shoulder the costs locally, regardless of their ability to pay.” 

The leaders said the state was investing minimally and school districts will continue to struggle to fund mandated primary special education programs.

State Superintendent Jill Underly called the Republicans’ proposal “irresponsible” in a statement Friday and said it “puts politics ahead of kids and disregards educators and public schools when they need support the most.”

“Our public schools desperately need and deserve funding that is flexible, spendable and predictable,” Underly said. “This budget fails to deliver on all three. Once again, those in power had an opportunity to do right by Wisconsin’s children — and once again, they turned their backs on them.” 

The committee also approved $30 million for the state’s choice school programs, $20 million for mental health services in school, $250,000 for robotics league grants, $750,000 for a single school, the Lakeland STAR Academy (a provision that Evers vetoed last session), $100,000 for Special Olympics Wisconsin, $3 million for public library system aid, $500,000 for recovery high schools and $500,000 for Wisconsin Reading Corps. 

Over $1 billion in tax cuts 

Republican lawmakers also approved tax cuts of about $1.3 billion for the budget Thursday evening after 8 p.m., including changes to the income tax brackets and a cut for retirees in Wisconsin.

Born and Marklein said the cuts would help retirees and other Wisconsinites afford to stay in the state.

“These are average, hard-working people in our state that will benefit from our tax cut,” Marklein said. 

The income tax change will allow more people to qualify for the second tax bracket with a rate of 4.4% by raising the qualifying maximum income to $50,480 for single filers, $67,300 for joint filers and $33,650 for married-separate filers. This will reduce the state’s revenues by $323 million in 2025-26 and $320 million in 2026-27. 

People currently eligible for the second tax bracket include: single filers making between $14,680 and $29,370, joint filers making between $19,580 and $39,150 and married separate filers making between $9,790 and $19,580.

Wisconsin Republicans have been seeking another significant tax cut since the last budget cycle when Evers vetoed their proposals. After the rejection, Republicans started to narrow their tax cuts proposals to focus on retirees and a couple of other groups with the hope of getting Evers’ approval. When negotiations on this year’s budget reached an impasse, Evers had said he was willing to support Republicans’ tax goals, but he wanted agreements from them, too. 

The proposal also includes an exclusion from income taxes for retirees that would reduce the state’s revenues by $395 million in 2025-26 and $300 million in 2026-27.

“This isn’t a high-income oriented kind of thing,” Marklein said during the meeting. “It just helps a lot of average people in the state of Wisconsin, so it’s very good tax policy.” 

Democrats appeared unimpressed with the tax proposal. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau told lawmakers that the income tax change would lead to about a maximum impact of $253 annually for married joint filers, $190 annually for single filers and $127 for married separate filers. 

“So roughly $5 a week for a married couple,” McGuire said. 

McGuire said that Democrats just have the perspective that Wisconsin could invest more in the priorities that residents have been expressing. 

“We heard from a lot of people about what they need,” McGuire said in reference to school districts. “We also know that as they’ve been attempting to get those funds they’ve had to go to referendums across the state, and… we think that’s harming communities and making it more difficult for people. As a perspective, we believe that that’s a good place to invest in dollars.” 

Tech colleges

The committee also voted to provide additional funding for the Wisconsin technical colleges, though it is, again, significantly less than what was requested by Evers and by the system.

The proposal will provide an additional $13 million to the system. This includes $7 million in general aid for the system of 16 technical colleges, $2 million in aid meant for grants for artificial intelligence, $3 million for grants for textbooks and nearly $30,000 to support the operations of the system. 

Evers had proposed the state provide the system with $45 million in general aid

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said the differences between Evers’ proposals and what Republicans offered were stark. 

“We hear my GOP colleagues talk about worker training all the time and this is their opportunity to make sure that our technical colleges have the resources that they need to make sure that we are training an adequate workforce,” Johnson said, noting that the state could be short by 1,000 nurses (many of whom start their education in technical colleges) by 2030. “I’ve never had an employer complain about having an educated workforce, not once, but I have heard employers say that Wisconsin lacks the skill sets and educational skills they need. It seems my Republican colleagues are more concerned with starving our institutions of higher education, rather than making sure they have the resources they need.” 

Testin said the proposal was not a cut and that Republicans were investing in technical colleges. 

“We see there’s value in our technical colleges because they are working with the business community … getting students through the door quicker with less debt,” Testin said. “Any conversations that this is a cut is just unrealistic. These are critical investments in the technical system.” 

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A worker installs a solar panel on a roof. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Clean energy manufacturers and advocates say they’re perplexed how the repeal of tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will keep their domestic production lines humming across the United States, particularly in states that elected him to the Oval Office.

While some Republicans have labeled the billions in tax credits a “green new scam,” statistics reviewed by States Newsroom show the jobs and benefits would boost predominantly GOP-leaning states and congressional districts. Now the industry is already slowing amid Trump’s back-and-forth tariff policy and mixed messaging on energy and manufacturing.

Trump vowed in early April that he would “supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back to our country, and you see it happening already,” he told a crowd in the White House Rose Garden while unveiling his new trade policy.

But as a way to pay for the $3.9 trillion price tag of extending and expanding the 2017 corporate and individual tax cuts, U.S. House Republicans found billions of dollars in savings by slashing over a dozen clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.

Critics say the mega-bill, which passed the GOP-led House on May 22 in a 215-214 vote, would effectively strip away the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit and other incentives.

They have bolstered the production of batteries and solar components in numerous states — top among them North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

U.S. senators are now negotiating the massive budget reconciliation legislation.

Kevin Doffling, CEO and founder of Project Vanguard, an organization that connects veterans to clean energy jobs, warned pulling the plug on the clean energy tax credits will stifle progress the U.S. has made against other countries, namely China.

“We’re just going to see a huge pullback from investments inside of advanced manufacturing here in the U.S., and then we’ll go source it from other places, instead of doing it here,” Doffling said on a May 28 press call pressing for senators to protect the tax credits.

Doffling’s organization works in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington and Utah.

Moving away from fossil fuels

The suite of tax credits enacted under the IRA incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of a reduction in the effects of climate change.

For example, the IRA’s Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit is awarded per unit produced and sold, and in some cases the capacity of energy output. 

Battery cell manufacturers can earn up to $35 per battery cell multiplied by potential kilowatt hours. In the case of solar, the credit offers producers 7 cents per solar module multiplied by wattage output. For mining operations extracting critical minerals, such as lithium, companies can receive a 10% tax break on the costs of production.

Most credits phase out by 2032 under the Biden-era law, except those for critical mineral mining, which continue.

A group of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam” — echoing Trump’s rhetoric — pushed to accelerate the expiration in the final version of the mega-bill, even for critical mineral mining and production. The federal government classifies critical minerals as crucial to national security.

The House-passed bill also severely tightens language around foreign components, titled “foreign entities of concern,” making the credit practically unusable as many parts of the clean energy manufacturing supply chain are global, industry professionals say.

The legislation also repeals “transferability,” which allows companies with little or no tax liability to sell the credits.

For example, a critical mineral mining company would not turn a profit during an initial phase and could sell the credits to offset the cost of operations.

Schneider Electric, a global corporation with a U.S. base in Massachusetts, has facilitated 18 transfer deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credits for U.S. companies since 2023. In a statement, Schneider said the deals “reflect growing market interest in flexible financing mechanisms that directly fund renewable projects.”

Silfab Solar, which recently built a solar cell manufacturing and module assembly plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina, announced in mid-May the sale of $110 million in Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credits to help fund its expansion. The company already runs a solar manufacturing site in Burlington, Washington.

Investment soared

Spurred by the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit, known as 45X, actual investment in clean energy manufacturing since August 2022 reached $115 billion in April, up from $21 billion over the same length of time prior to the IRA, the Clean Investment Monitor found.

Of the 380 clean technology production facilities announced since the third quarter of 2022, 161 are now operational, according to CIM data.

The credit spurred a “sea change” in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, said Mike Williams, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and former deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which advocates for the joining of labor and environmental organizations.

Despite solar technology’s roots in the U.S., the nation “didn’t even have a toe” in solar manufacturing, Williams said. Other countries, most notably Germany and then China, have dominated the industry.

“But after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, all of a sudden we see panel manufacturing, we see parts and components manufacturing, absolutely exploding. Plants have announced and started construction in Georgia, in Oklahoma,” Williams said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Active manufacturing of solar components, advanced batteries and wind turbines and vessels is concentrated in rural areas. Most are located in states that went red in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Clean Power America Association’s May 2025 State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in America report.

The renewable energy policy group estimated the industry supports 122,000 full-time manufacturing jobs across the U.S.

Active solar manufacturing sites and expansions are clustered in Texas, Ohio and Alabama, according to data from the association. Should major project announcements in Georgia pull through, the state would surpass Alabama for third place.

Advanced battery manufacturing spans 38 states, with the largest concentrations in California, Michigan and North Carolina.

But various parts of the battery production process stretch throughout the country — for example, battery cell production in Nevada and Tennessee and module production in Utah. Other supporting hardware is made in South Carolina, Arizona and Texas.

Lithium, a critical mineral for battery production, is currently mined in Nevada and California. And investors are eyeing other spots in the U.S., namely Alaska, to mine and produce graphite, another critical mineral.

China largely dominates the world’s critical mineral supply chain, according to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2024.

When accounting for the full suite of clean energy tax credits that were enacted in 2022 — including residential, electric vehicles and clean electricity credits — just over 312,900 new jobs are linked to the industry, the bulk in Republican-led congressional districts, according to the advocacy group Climate Power’s 2024 report on clean energy employment.

Troy Van Beek, CEO and founder of the Iowa-based solar company Ideal Energy, said his business weathered the pandemic and has been able to add jobs, but is now facing uncertainty again.

“​​We’re getting our feet under us and really starting to operate. I went from 20-some jobs to over 60 jobs, and those are good-paying jobs for people and their families. So we need that stability in the industry,” said Van Beek, who spoke on the call with Doffling.

“What troubles me is the rocking of the boat to such a degree that we can’t get anything done, and that’s been very difficult to deal with,” he said.

Industry slowdown

The industry has seen a pullback since January and the beginning of the Trump presidency.

Six announced projects representing $6.9 billion in investment were canceled in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Clean Investment Monitor’s latest State of U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains report. While investment in clean energy overall continues to grow, the beginning of 2025 shows a slowdown from where the industry was a year ago.

Van Beek, whose solar company provides construction and installation among others services, said recent talks to strike a deal with a solar manufacturer collapsed after threats to the tax credits.

“We had worked an entire year on putting together (a deal) with one of the leading manufacturers in the world that has U.S. manufacturing to actually have joint ventures and work with them on projects,” Van Beek said. “And when this came up, that deal came to a screeching halt.”

Van Beek did not name the company on the call and did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview.

Several companies declined States Newsroom’s requests for comment while senators negotiate the bill.

Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said the unpredictability is interrupting how operators are planning for the coming years.

“Whether large or small, just the business certainty and the ability to plan out your business is disrupted when you have any type of tax mechanism that is abruptly halted when you’re doing business planning at five- or 10-year intervals,” said Pederson, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs.

Too expensive, Republicans say

Some House Republicans, led by Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, urged party colleagues to protect the clean energy tax credits — for example by removing the “overly prescriptive” restrictions on foreign entities of concern and keeping in place transferability of tax credits.

Kiggans wrote to House Republican tax writers in mid-May that “the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families.”

Her co-signers included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Dave Joyce of Ohio and Dan Newhouse of Washington, who all eventually voted for the final bill.

Far-right House members won on not only shortening the lifespan of the credits, but also on keeping the restrictive foreign entity language and on repealing a company’s ability to transfer credits.

The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union hailed the “commonsense changes” championed by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, under the leadership of Maryland Rep. Andy Harris.

The organization, which favors cutting government spending and lowering taxes, pointed to the cost. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the credits as of 2022 were valued at roughly $384.9 billion over ten years.

“The longer these subsidies remain in law, the more expensive they will become and the harder it will be for Congress to remove them. Now it’s up to the Senate to support the Green New Deal Rollbacks,” Thomas Aiello, NTU’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in the days following the House vote.

Hope in the Senate?

But representatives from multinational corporations to mid-size businesses and sizable trade associations are now looking to the U.S. Senate to restore measures that they say created a boom time for investment, production and new energy on the grid.

Jeannie Salo, chief public policy officer at Schneider Electric, said in a statement to States Newsroom that “The Senate should restore and extend the timelines for key energy and manufacturing credits and their transferability to ensure the nation continues to attract key investments and projects that will power the U.S. economy and help make energy more affordable.”

Pederson said the restrictions on foreign components and company ties are “particularly restrictive coming out of the House.”

“So we’re hoping to work with the Senate Finance Committee and some of the members of the Senate who have indicated some willingness to make the foreign entity of concern language a little bit more workable,” Pederson said.

Doffling believes senators have a “longer term vision” of the nation’s energy strategy than House members who face reelection every two years.

“They see what’s happening not just in their district, but in the entire state that they represent,” Doffling said.

The House bill just sets the U.S. “further behind,” he added. “This bill is all about going backwards in time and hoping for the best.”

“I wish they could look at the numbers and understand the economic impacts it’s gonna have. … But somehow we’re talking about the fact of hamstringing a whole entire industry itself over verbiage of the word ‘clean.’”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, center, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republican Leader John Thune will spend a crucial next few weeks working behind the scenes with other top GOP senators to reshape the party’s “big beautiful bill” — a balancing test accompanied in recent days by incendiary exchanges between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over whether the current proposals are so bad that Congress should just go back to the drawing board.

South Dakota’s Thune will need to gain support from deficit hawks, who want to see the mega-bill cut at least $2 trillion in spending, and moderates, who are closely monitoring how less federal funding for safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance could harm their constituents and home-state institutions like rural hospitals.

Interviews by States Newsroom with Republican senators in early June showed many major elements of the package could change, including provisions that would put states on the hook for unanticipated costs. Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, for example, indicated the Senate may rewrite a proposal in the House-passed bill that would shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to low-income people, to state governments.

“We can do whatever we want to do,” the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee chairman said when asked by States Newsroom about amending that policy.

The final deal — intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts — cannot lose more than three GOP senators and still make it back across the Capitol to the House for final approval, since all Democrats are expected to oppose the bill. Thune only needs a majority vote in the Senate for the special process being used by Republicans.

Internal debates about just how to rework the Trump-backed tax and spending cuts measure began in the first week of June during meetings on Capitol Hill and at the White House, as GOP senators began critiquing the House-passed package line-by-line to ensure it complies with their strict rules for the complex reconciliation process and their policy goals.

Republicans said during interviews that several provisions in the House version likely won’t comply with the chamber’s Byrd rule, which could force lawmakers to toss out some provisions.

Complicating all of it was the very public back-and-forth between not just Trump but GOP leaders and former White House adviser Musk over the bill, which Musk on social media labeled “a disgusting abomination” and a “big, ugly spending bill” for its effect on the deficit and debt limit. “KILL the BILL,” Musk said on X, the platform he owns. Senate leaders so far have dismissed Musk’s criticisms.

Fragile House coalition

The talks, and whatever the legislation looks like after a marathon amendment voting session expected in late June, have already raised deep concerns among House GOP lawmakers, who will have to vote on the bill again in order to send it to Trump.

The extremely narrow majorities mean House Republican leaders cannot lose more than four of their own members if all the lawmakers in that chamber vote on the party-line bill.

Any changes the Senate makes could unbalance the fragile coalition of votes Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cobbled together last month for a 215-214 vote. But GOP senators are adamant they will amend the legislation.

Complicating matters is a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that shows the proposed changes to tax law, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and higher education aid wouldn’t actually help to reduce deficits during the next decade but raise them by more than $2.4 trillion.

The numbers are the exact opposite for what Republicans hoped their sweeping tax and spending cuts package would accomplish.

Scrutiny begins

The first stop for the House-passed reconciliation package in the Senate appears to be the parliamentarian’s office, where staff have begun evaluating whether each provision in the current version of the bill complies with the upper chamber’s strict rules.

Boozman said staff on his panel have already begun meeting with the parliamentarian to go over the House provisions within its jurisdiction.

He expects that section of the package will have to change to comply with the strict rules that govern the reconciliation process in the Senate and to better fit that chamber’s policy goals.

“We can’t really decide exactly what we want to use in the House version until we know what’s eligible,” Boozman said. “We’ve got some other ideas too that we asked them about. But we need to know, of the ideas that we have, what would be viable options as far as being Byrd eligible.”

The Byrd rule, which is actually a law, requires reconciliation bills to address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit. This generally bars lawmakers from using the special budget process to change policies that don’t have a significant impact on those three areas.

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is campaigning to become his home state’s next governor, said pushing some of the cost of the nutrition program to states may be problematic.

“We’re trying to send more costs to the states. Most states can’t afford that, so we want to take care of people, but we need people to go back to work,” Tuberville said. “It’s not a forever entitlement. It’s for part-time, you know, take care of yourself until you get a job, go back to work and let people that need it really, really get it.”

Rural hospitals on edge

Senate GOP leaders will have to navigate how best to reduce federal spending on Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower-income people and some with disabilities, that is relied on by tens of millions of Americans, many of whom are loyal Republican voters.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that 7.8 million people would lose access to Medicaid during the next decade if the House’s policy changes are implemented as written.

There are also concerns among GOP lawmakers about how losing the revenue that comes with treating Medicaid patients would impact rural health care access and hospitals.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said under no circumstances would he vote for a bill that cuts benefits to Medicaid recipients and is worried about how provisions in the House package would affect rural hospitals.

“They’re very concerned about it, rightly so,” Hawley said, referring to conversations he’s had with health care systems in his home state.

“This is something that we need to work on. I don’t know why we would penalize rural hospitals,” he added. “If you want to reduce health care spending, then cap the price of prescription drugs. I mean, that’s the way to do it. If you want to get major savings in the health care sector, don’t close rural hospitals, don’t take away benefits from working people. Cap the costs, cap the price that (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is going to pay for prescription drugs.”

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’s not yet come to a decision about whether to keep, amend, or completely scrap some of the House changes to Medicaid.

“I talked to a lot of our hospitals when I was home to see what the impacts would be, because we have a very high Medicaid population,” Capito said. “I want to see it work and be preserved, but I want it to be there for future generations. And it’s just getting way out of control on the spend side. So right now, we’re looking at everything.”

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said he doesn’t expect all of the health care provisions in the House bill make it through the “Byrd bath” with the parliamentarian. But he declined to go into detail.

“Some of it is more regulatory, that’s all I can say,” Cassidy said.

West Virginia’s Sen. Jim Justice said he is in favor of requiring some Medicaid enrollees to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month to stay on the program, a sentiment shared by many of his GOP colleagues.

“I’m good with every bit of that,” he said. 

But Justice expects the Senate will make its own changes to the package and that it will be “proud of their own pond.”

“Any frog that’s not proud of your own pond’s not much of a frog,” Justice said.

He did not go into detail on what those changes would entail.

SALT shakers

The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, represents another tightrope  for Thune, who is no fan of the changes made in the House. But he has said repeatedly this week he understands altering that language too much could mean a Senate-amended version of the bill never makes it back through the House to actually become law.

Thune said outside the White House following a June 4 meeting with Trump and others that there will very likely be changes to SALT.

“There isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue,” Thune said. “It’s just not an issue that plays.” States that are most affected generally don’t elect Republicans to the Senate.

The House tax-writing panel originally proposed raising the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000, but Johnson had to raise that to $40,000 in order to secure votes from House Republicans who represent higher tax states like California, New Jersey and New York. The revised cap would benefit more high-income taxpayers in their states.

“In 2017, that was one of the best reforms we had in the bill,” Thune said. “But we understand it’s about 51 and 218. So we will work with our House counterparts and with the White House to try to get that issue in a place where we can deliver the votes and get the bill across the finish line.”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, but can rely on Vice President J.D. Vance to break a tied vote if necessary.

At least 218 House lawmakers must vote to pass bills when all 435 seats are filled. But with three vacancies at the moment, legislation can move through that chamber with 216 votes. The GOP has 220 seats at the moment, meaning Johnson can afford four defections on party-line bills.

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven told reporters this week that he’d like to see GOP senators rework the SALT section of the bill, even if that causes challenges for Speaker Johnson’s ability to pass a final version.

“Let’s talk about SALT, for example. The House has a very large SALT number. The Senate is probably going to take a look at that,” Hoeven said. “There’ll be a lot of areas we can look at. There’ll be other things we’re going to look at. We’d like to get to $2 trillion in savings.”

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno joined in putting his House colleagues on notice that they likely won’t get the agreement they struck with the speaker in the final version of the bill.

“I think we’re going to make common-sense changes. For example, the SALT cap, by the way, something that definitely helps very wealthy people in blue states,” Moreno said. “I think that cap, the 400% increase, is too much, so we’re going to work on tweaking that.”

Hawley, of Missouri, speaking more generally about the tax provisions, said he would like the Senate to make sure middle-class Americans benefit from the tax changes, just as much as companies.

“I want to be clear, I’m in favor of additional tax relief for working people. So my view is this corporate tax rate, which they lowered in 2017, they made that permanent back then. I know some workers that would like permanent tax relief,” Hawley said. “So I think it’s imperative that we do some addition to tax relief for workers. So I think that’s important.”

A new $4 trillion debt limit

Deficit hawks in the Senate have also voiced objections to raising the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion, arguing that GOP leaders haven’t done enough to assuage their concerns about the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul argued that the debt limit increase is more about next year’s midterm elections than good governance.

“​​This is really about avoiding having to talk about the debt during election times because people like to go home and talk to the Rotary or the Lions Club and tell them how they’re fiscally conservative and they’re against debt,” Paul said. “It’s embarrassing to them to have to vote to keep raising the debt. But they’re unwilling to have the courage to actually look at all spending.”

Paul suggested that House Republicans created problems by inflating some of the spending levels in their package, including to continue construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Paul is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“The $46.5 billion for the wall is eight times higher than the current cost of the wall. If you’re going to do 1,000 miles, you can actually do it for $6.5 billion. They want $46.5 billion,” Paul said. “We can’t be fiscally conservative until it comes to the border, and then we’re no longer fiscally conservative.”

The border wall has been a constant focus for Trump, who made it a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said repeatedly that the United States would build it and Mexico would pay for it.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Budget Committee, hinted during a brief interview that Congress can only cut so much spending without going near programs like Social Security, which accounted for $1.5 trillion in expenditures last year, or Medicare, which spent $865 billion. Both are normally considered untouchable.

“I think we’re going to make some changes to try to find more spending reductions. I think that’s a fair criticism of the bill, but you can’t do Social Security by law,” Graham said, referring to one of the many rules that govern the reconciliation process. “Nobody’s proposed anything in the Medicare area.”

Graham added that “trying to make the bill more fiscally responsible is a good thing, but we need to pass it.” 

The U.S. Capitol on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released detailed analysis Wednesday showing Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” would increase federal deficits by $2.4 trillion during the next decade.

CBO projects that if enacted as written, the legislation would result in 10.9 million people losing access to health insurance by 2034, a number that includes “1.4 million people without verified citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status who would no longer be covered in state-only funded programs in 2034.”

The score is the most up-to-date analysis by Congress’ official scorekeeper on how the sweeping tax and spending cuts package the House approved last month will impact the federal budget in the years ahead.

Republicans have been highly critical of the CBO’s assessment of the legislation’s real-world impacts, arguing that keeping tax rates as they are now, instead of letting them rise at the end of the year when the 2017 GOP tax law expires, will boost economic growth.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., lambasted the CBO during a press conference shortly after the report came out, arguing its economic growth projections haven’t been completely accurate.

“This bill will actually reduce the deficit, if you recognize the historical economic growth that has always been there,” Scalise said. “To say you’re going to get 1.8% growth. At a minimum, we think you can get 2.5 to 4% growth. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, says over 4% economic growth. So I get that we’ve got to play by the rules of the referee, but the referee has been wrong.”

During the last decade, U.S. growth only surpassed 3% during one year, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Gross domestic product growth measured 2.5% in 2014, 2.9% in 2015, 1.8% in 2016, 2.5% in 2017, 3% in 2018, 2.6% in 2019, -2.2% in 2020 during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, 6.1% in 2021, 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024. 

White House budget director Russ Vought posted on social media that the CBO score “confirms what we knew about the bill at House passage.”

“The bill REDUCES deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big gimmick–not using a realistic current policy baseline,” Vought wrote. “It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture.”

Disagreement over the ‘big beautiful bill’

GOP lawmakers have also sought to brush aside criticism from some of their own members, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who both argue the legislation must cut spending more to reduce the federal deficit in the long run.

Billionaire and former Trump administration staffer Elon Musk has also become increasingly vocal about his opposition to the package, writing on social media this week that the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

The House voted mostly along party lines in May to send the sweeping spending and tax cuts package to the Senate, which is expected to debate and amend the legislation in the weeks ahead.

CBO’s analysis will likely inform some of that conversation, and help senators better understand how the policy changes proposed by their House colleagues would affect state government budgets and the communities they represent. 

The CBO previously shared analysis of each of the 11 bills that make up the package, but those didn’t reflect several changes GOP House leaders made just hours before the floor vote in that chamber.

Updated numbers

The updated projections show Republicans’ plan to extend the 2017 tax law and make other tweaks to tax policy would increase the deficit by $3.754 trillion during the next decade. That increase to the deficit caused by the tax changes, which CBO has also found would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners, would be partly offset by spending reductions on certain programs.

The Armed Services Committee’s bill would increase deficits by $144 billion, more than the $100 billion ceiling Republicans envisioned in the budget outline that was supposed to set guardrails on the package. Homeland Security’s provisions would increase deficits by $79 billion. And the Judiciary Committee’s language would increase deficits by $9 billion during the 10-year budget window.

The section of the package drafted by the Energy and Commerce Committee, which would make substantial changes to Medicaid and several other programs within the panel’s jurisdiction, would decrease spending by $1.086 trillion during the 10-year budget window.

The panel’s bill has four subcategories: energy, environment, communications and health. The health provisions, which include substantial changes to Medicaid, would reduce federal spending by $902 billion between 2025 and 2034.

Language barring Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the state-federal health program would reduce federal spending by $2.6 billion during the next decade.

Requiring some people on Medicaid to work, participate in community service or attend educational programs for at least 80 hours a month would reduce federal spending by $344 billion during the next 10 years.

Blocking any Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood would cut federal costs by $261 million during the 10-year budget window. Federal law already bars health care programs like Medicaid from covering abortions unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or it endangers the life of the woman.

Separate analysis from CBO, released later Wednesday, projects that 7.8 million people would lose access to Medicaid because of the policy changes laid out in the House GOP bill. Another 2.3 million would lose access to health insurance due to changes to tax policy and 1.3 million people would no longer be able to purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

CBO estimates that about 500,000 people would be impacted by interactions among the various health care policy changes. That number, subtracted from the numbers of those who would lose access, leads  to a total of 10.9 million people losing access to health insurance by 2034.  

Democratic criticism

Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, wrote in a statement that it’s “shocking House Republicans rushed to vote on this bill without an accounting from CBO on the millions of people who will lose their health care or the trillions of dollars it would add to the national (deficit).

“The truth is Republican leaders raced to pass this bill under cover of night because they didn’t want the American people or even their own members to know about its catastrophic consequences.”

The Agriculture Committee’s provisions, including pushing off some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to states, would reduce federal spending by $238 billion during the next decade.

The Education and Workforce Committee’s language would decrease federal spending by $349 billion. The Financial Services section of the package would reduce federal spending by $5 billion. Natural Resources would lower spending by $18 billion. And Transportation and Infrastructure would reduce spending by nearly $37 billion. 

The Oversight and Government Reform bill would decrease spending by $12 billion, significantly less than the minimum of $50 billion the panel was supposed to cut under the reconciliation instructions included in the budget resolution. 

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Billionaire Elon Musk said Friday he will continue to advise President Donald Trump despite stepping away from his official role as a special government employee.

During a wide-ranging Oval Office press conference, Musk — sporting a bruised right eye he blamed on a punch he invited from one of his sons, 5-year-old X — also said he expects U.S. DOGE Service will continue trying to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending, setting the middle of next year as a target date.

“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said. “My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end — it was a limited time thing, it’s 134 days I believe, which ends in a few days. So it comes with a time limit. But the DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only grow stronger.”

Musk then compared his initiative to Buddhism, a religion practiced by hundreds of millions of people, saying DOGE jobs were “like a way of life” that he hoped would permeate throughout the federal government.

DOGE’s efforts so far have led to about $160 billion in spending cuts, Musk said. That’s a small fraction of the $6.8 trillion the federal government spent during the most recent fiscal year and short of the goal he set before joining the administration.

Musk said DOGE was “relentlessly pursuing” at least $1 trillion in spending cuts to benefit American taxpayers, shortly after pointing out a golden eagle on the ceiling of the Oval Office that Trump said used to be plaster.

“Nobody ever really saw it. They didn’t know the eagle was up there, and we highlighted it,” Trump said. “Essentially it’s a landmark, a great landmark, and that’s 24-karat gold. And everybody loved it. Now, they all see it when they come in. So it’s been good.”

Musk hailed Trump for ensuring the Oval Office “finally has the majesty that it deserves.” Neither man shared how much was spent to redesign the eagle.

Musk plans to refocus his professional efforts on his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

New York Times story on Musk drug use

Trump said he “hopes” that Musk continues to advise him on government issues, even though he will no longer be employed by the White House.

Republican lawmakers, Trump said, are “totally committed to making the DOGE cuts permanent and stopping much more of the waste in the months to come.”

“We want to get our great, big, beautiful bill finished and done,” Trump said, referring to a tax and spending cuts package the House passed earlier this month. “We put some of this into the bill, but most of it’s going to come later. We’re going to have it (codified) by Congress, affirmed by Congress. In some cases, we’ll make cuts, in some cases we’ll just use it in a different layer to save the money. But it’s hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Musk declined to answer a question about a bombshell New York Times report published earlier in the day that detailed his ongoing use of drugs, including ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.

Trump desires bigger tax cuts from Senate

Trump said during the press conference he hopes the U.S. Senate amends the “big, beautiful bill” by cutting more government spending, without specifying which programs.

That package would cut about $1.5 trillion in federal funding for several programs during the next decade, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its full analysis of the package next week, including how changes made just before the bill went to the floor will impact state budgets and people’s access to safety net programs.

Trump also called on senators to further lower taxes in the package,

“It’s an unbelievable bill…It cuts, you know, it’s a huge cutting,” Trump said. “But there’s things I’d like to see, maybe cut a little bit more. I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes. It’s going to be the largest tax decrease or cut in the history of our country. I’d like to see it get down to an even lower number. I was shooting for a slightly lower number. I would have liked to have done that.”

Trump appeared to renew his call for Congress to completely eliminate the debt limit, even though the tax and spending cuts package would raise that ceiling by $4 trillion.

“I agree with Elizabeth Warren on that. I think we should get rid of it,” Trump said, referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. “It’s too catastrophic.”

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) website for enrolling in Medicaid and other state benefits programs. (Screenshot)

Among changes to Medicaid tucked in the federal reconciliation bill that passed the U.S. House last week is one that requires participants in the state-federal health plan for the poor to prove they’re eligible every six months.

Wisconsin advocates said Tuesday the provision is likely to reduce Medicaid enrollment — not because people don’t qualify but because of administrative errors and confusion.

Under current state and federal law, people covered by Medicaid must have their eligibility confirmed every year. Eligibility depends on various factors, chief among them household income. People whose Medicaid services are tied to a disability undergo an annual evaluation to determine whether their disability still qualifies them.

“We already do a really good job about making sure that everybody who’s in Medicaid is already eligible to be there,” Tamara Jackson, policy analyst and legislative liaison for the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, said in an interview.

Checking eligibility more frequently isn’t likely to uncover more people who are enrolled in Medicaid and don’t qualify, Jackson said: “It will lead to a different result because people who are eligible for the program are losing coverage because they didn’t get the paperwork in on time.”

“It’s going to probably result in kicking people off the program — some of it through error and some of it just benign neglect,” said Bobby Peterson, executive director of ABC for Health. The nonprofit is a public interest law firm that assists people navigating the health care system get coverage and address problems such as medical debt.

“It’s part of a blizzard of paperwork to keep people off the program,” Peterson said of the twice-yearly Medicaid eligibility test. “And it’s not necessarily going to be very effective in maintaining program integrity.”

He said Medicaid participants are already required to report changes in their income that could change whether they’re eligible.  

“It’s calculated to deter people from staying with the [Medicaid] program,” Peterson said. “It’ll leave more people out and less people covered, more people uninsured.”

With fewer people covered by health insurance, that could lead to “higher rates of medical debt, higher rates of uncompensated care, and then the socialization and redistribution of all that medical debt onto everybody else’s [health care] bill,” Peterson said. “So, it’s a lose-lose proposition.”

The House Republican majority drafted the reconciliation legislation in order to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

The bill’s tax cuts largely benefit higher-income households, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The bill’s spending cuts to Medicaid and other programs, including federal nutrition aid, were included to reduce the tax cuts’ impact on the federal deficit.

In Wisconsin, about 1.3 million people are covered by Medicaid, according to the state Department of Health Services (DHS). About 900,000 are enrolled in BadgerCare Plus, which provides primary health care for families and single adults with incomes below the federal poverty guidelines. Another 250,000 are in one of several Medicaid programs for long-term care for people with disabilities or the elderly, and the rest are in other specialized programs.  

The change in how often Medicaid recipients must qualify for the program is just one of many changes in the program under the House reconciliation bill.

In a report produced in late April before the bill’s passage, the state Department of Health Services (DHS) calculated that its proposed Medicaid changes could cost Wisconsin up to $16.8 billion over the next date.

Current federal Medicaid regulations forbid states from determining a person’s eligibility more often than once a year. The House reconciliation bill would effectively override that rule.

A requirement to check every Medicaid recipient’s eligibility twice a year was part of state legislation that Wisconsin Republican lawmakers introduced earlier this year. That bill was met with sweeping criticism at a public hearing in April and has not advanced in the state Legislature.

Supporters of the change have argued that more should be done to reduce fraud in  the Medicaid program. But health care experts contend that the Medicaid cuts in the House bill are unlikely to address genuine fraud.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government temporarily suspended the annual Medicaid renewal requirement to ensure that people had health coverage and would seek medical help if they felt sick.

“Obviously if there’s a public health emergency, you want to maintain connections and access to health care and coverage,” Peterson said. Some people may have been still covered under Medicaid after they were no longer eligible, he added, and some “didn’t even know they had Medicaid or BadgerCare Plus in addition to some private insurance at various times.”

Nevertheless, “it wasn’t like there was wide-scale fraud” in the Medicaid program, Peterson said. “There’s very little evidence of a lot of consumer-related fraud in the program.”

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At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats have argued the bill, which the House passed, 215-214 early Thursday without any Democrats in support, would cut programs for the needy to fund tax breaks for high earners.

The CBO document, issued late Thursday, responded to a request to the office from the top Democrats on the Senate and House Agriculture committees, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Angie Craig, both of Minnesota, and somewhat bolsters that claim. The panels oversee federal food aid programs.

“This report is truly devastating,” Craig said in a Friday statement to States Newsroom. “As a mother and someone who at times relied on food assistance as a child, these numbers are heartbreaking. It is infuriating that Republicans in Congress are willing to make our children go hungry so they can give tax breaks to the already rich.”

A provision in the bill to tighten work requirements, including by excluding single parents of children older than 6 and by raising the age of adults to whom the work requirements apply, of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would result in 3.2 million people losing access to the program in an average month, the CBO report said.

Of those, 1.4 million would be people who currently have a state waiver from work requirements that would be disallowed under the bill and 800,000 would be adults who live with children 7 or older, the report said.

In a Friday statement, Ben Nichols, a spokesman for the House Agriculture Committee led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, said the proposed change would be more fair to the people SNAP is supposed to help and noted the program is the only state-administered entitlement program that is paid fully by the federal government.

“No one who is able-bodied and working, volunteering, or training for 20 hours a week will lose benefits,” Nichols wrote.

Republicans want to use the legislative package to extend the 2017 tax law and its cuts, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending.

Toll on states

The cost-share changes, which would require states for the first time to pay for a portion of SNAP benefits, would also limit participation and add a massive line item to state budgets, according to the CBO.

Starting in 2028, states would be responsible for paying 5% to 25% of SNAP benefits, with a state’s share rising with its payment error rate. The federal government currently pays for all SNAP benefits.

Under the House bill, which will likely undergo substantial changes as the Senate considers it in the coming weeks, states collectively would be responsible for just less than $100 billion from 2028 to 2034, about $14 billion per year.

States would respond in a variety of ways, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote, including potentially dropping out of the program.

“CBO expects that some states would maintain current benefits and eligibility and others would modify benefits or eligibility or possibly leave the program altogether because of the increased costs,” he wrote.

The office took a “probabilistic approach to account for a range of possible outcomes” to determine what the effect on households would be and estimated that 1.3 million people would lose benefits because of state responses to the new cost-share.

Nichols, with the House Agriculture Committee, disputed the CBO’s estimate regarding the cost share change. The lowest state cost-share of 5% would be available for states with error rates below 6%. Every state has hit that mark at some point in the last decade, he said.

With that favorable of a cost-share, the Republican committee members did not believe states would drop out of the program, he added.

“We reject the hypothetical assumption that some states may not chip into 5 percent of a supplemental nutrition program,” Nichols wrote. “Every state is capable of paying for a portion SNAP… Federal policy should encourage states to administer the SNAP program more efficiently and effectively, and this bill does just that.” 

CBO’s forecasters determined the impacts of the work requirements and cost-share provisions separately, meaning some people potentially losing benefits could have been counted in both categories.

Move to the Senate

The House vote Thursday sent the measure to the Senate, where the debate over SNAP benefits may fall along similar party lines.

Republicans who hold control in that chamber are planning to employ the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to skirt the Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement for legislation.

During the House Agriculture Committee’s debate over its portion of the legislation, Republicans on the panel said the work requirement and state cost-share measures were needed reforms to SNAP that would protect the program for those it was meant to serve, while limiting the costs associated with benefits to adults who were able and unwilling to work or in the country illegally.

In a Friday statement, Sara Lasure, a spokeswoman for Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, also said the panel would seek reforms to the program but did not offer specifics.

“The Senate Agriculture Committee is in the process of crafting its budget reconciliation package and will work as good stewards of taxpayer dollars to make commonsense reforms to SNAP that encourage employment,” she wrote in an email.

Klobuchar, in a statement after House passage Thursday, blasted the House bill and indicated she would oppose efforts to cut SNAP benefits.

“House Republicans are pulling the rug out from under millions of families by taking away federal assistance to put food on the table,” she said. “They’re doing that even as President Trump’s tariff taxes raise food prices by more than $200 for the average family, all to fund more tax breaks for the wealthy. That’s so very wrong —and we will fight against it in the Senate.”

Gov. Tony Evers celebrates "historic" tax cuts in the last state budget. Schools are still facing austerity. Photo via Gov. Evers' Facebook page

As Republicans in Congress struggle to deliver President Donald Trump’s massive cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, education, health research and just about every other social good you can think of, in order to clear the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest people in the U.S., here in Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state lawmakers are working on the next state budget.

The one thing our Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders seem to agree on is that we need a tax cut.

After throwing away more than 600 items in Evers’ budget proposal, GOP leggies now say they can’t move forward with their own budget plan until  Evers makes good on his promise to meet with them and negotiate the terms for the tax-cutting that both sides agree they want to do. Evers has expressed optimism that the budget will be done on time this summer, and said the tax cuts need to be part of the budget, not a separate, stand-alone bill. Evers wants a more progressive tax system, with cuts targeted to lower-income people. In the last budget, he opposed expanding the second-lowest tax bracket, which would have offered the same benefits to higher earners as the lower middle class.

But what if we don’t need a tax cut at all?

It has long been an article of faith in the Republican Party that tax cuts are a miracle cure for everything. Trickle-down economics is  a proven failure:  The wealthy and corporations tend to bank their tax cuts rather than injecting the extra money into the economy, as tax-cutters say they will. The benefits of the 2017 tax cuts that Congress is struggling to extend went exclusively to corporations and the very wealthy and failed to trickle down on the rest of us. 

 In the second Trump administration, we are in new territory when it comes to tax cutting. The administration and its enablers are hell-bent on destroying everything from the Department of Education to critical health research to food stamps and Medicaid in order to finance massive tax breaks for the very rich. 

If ever there were a good time to reexamine the tax-cutting reflex, it’s now.

Evers has said he is not willing to consider the Republicans’ stand-alone tax-cut legislation, and that, instead, tax cuts should be part of the state budget. That makes sense, since new projections show lower-than-expected tax revenue even without a cut, and state budget-writers have a lot to consider as we brace for the dire effects of federal budget cuts. The least our leaders can do is not blindly give away cash without even assessing future liabilities.

But beyond that, we need to reconsider the knee-jerk idea that we are burdened with excessive taxes and regulations, that our state would be better off if we cut investments in our schools and universities, our roads and bridges, our clean environment, museums, libraries and other shared spaces and stopped keeping a floor under poor kids by providing basic food and health care assistance. 

Wisconsin Republicans like to tout the list of states produced annually by the Tax Foundation promoting “business friendly” environments that reduce corporate taxes, including Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska and Florida. They also like to bring up ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” report that gave top billing last year to Utah, Idaho and Arizona for low taxes and deregulation. 

What they don’t track when they lift up those states are pollution, low wages and bankrupt public school systems. 

I’m old enough to remember when it was headline news that whole families in the U.S. were living in their cars, when homelessness was a new term, coined during the administration of Ronald Reagan, the father of bogus trickle-down economics and massive cuts to services for the poor. 

Somehow, we got used to the idea that urban parts of the richest nation on Earth resemble the poorest developing countries, with human misery and massive wealth existing side by side in our live-and-let-die economy.

Wisconsin, thanks to its progressive history, managed to remain a less unequal state, with top public schools and a great university system, as well as a clean, beautiful environment and well-maintained infrastructure. But here, too, we have been getting used to our slide to the bottom of the list of states, thanks in large part to the damage done by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. 

We now rank 44th in the nation for investment in our once-great universities, and the austerity that’s been imposed on higher education is taking a toll across the state. Our consistently highly rated public schools have suffered from a decade and a half of budget cuts that don’t allow districts to keep pace with inflation, and recent state budgets have not made up the gap. 

Now threats to Medicaid, Head Start, AmeriCorps, our excellent library system, UW-Madison research and environmental protections do not bode well for Wisconsin’s future.

In the face of brutal federal cuts, we need to recommit to our shared interest in investing in a decent society, and figure out how to preserve what’s great about our state.

Tax cuts do not make the top of the list of priorities.

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From left, parents Jessica Seawright and Brooke Wampole talk with Sen. Tammy Baldwin about their concerns over the impact of Medicaid cuts on families with children such as theirs who have disabilities. (Screenshot/Zoom)

As members of Congress continue to debate the Republican budget reconciliation bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, Jessica Seawright ponders what that could mean for her young son.

Seawright is a social worker in Southeast Wisconsin. She’s also the mother of a 9-year-old boy with complex medical needs resulting from a genetic condition.

She and her husband — a college professor — have medical coverage through work, but with her son’s condition, which includes cerebral palsy, their health plans could never cover the degree of care he requires.

Medicaid has made the difference, Seawright said Wednesday. It’s helped through the Katie Beckett  program, which enables children with disabilities to have Medicaid coverage while living at home instead of being in an institution; the Medicaid children’s long-term support coverage; and Medicaid support that public schools receive to cover certain services that students with disabilities require.

Her son has been able to thrive living with her and her husband, Seawright said — but worry clouds the future.

“We look toward his adulthood, knowing that disability and aging programs that would support him staying in the community — where we, our family and our community, know he belongs — are being dismantled and defunded,” Seawright said. “Forcing us and others like us into medical bankruptcy is not a solution.”

Seawright was one of two parents who said Wednesday that their lives and their children’s lives could be profoundly upended by the Medicaid reductions that are included in the budget reconciliation proposal.

They spoke during a webinar conducted by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), who has been an outspoken critic of the budget bill’s Medicaid cuts.

“Our neighbors, our friends and our colleagues at work who rely on Medicaid and are scared, really scared,” Baldwin said. She cited estimates produced by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee that with cuts to Medicaid as well as to the Affordable Care Act, the legislation could reduce health care for nearly  14 million Americans, including almost 230,000 Wisconsin residents.

The money saved, she added, would be used to extend and expand tax cuts enacted in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has said the tax cuts primarily favor the wealthy and corporations.

“It’s giveaways for their wealthy friends at the cost of Americans’ health and lives,” Baldwin said. “That’s the deal.”

Baldwin said the choice that U.S. House Republicans made to advance the bill in committee in the early hours of Wednesday morning was a sign that “Republicans know what they’re doing is deeply unpopular.”

She dismissed claims that the objective of the bill’s authors was to address waste, fraud or abuse in Medicaid and other safety net programs.

“I would be happy to come to the table to write a bill that truly gets at fraud and abuse,” Baldwin said. “We want that out of Medicaid. We want that out of Medicare. But that is not what this bill does. This bill terminates health care for Wisconsin families.”

Besides being a mother of a child who has been helped by Medicaid’s programs, Seawright has experienced Medicaid through two other lenses.

When she and her sister were growing up, their mother was relying on Medicaid for the family’s health care. That helped give the family stability so that her mom could go to community college, become a medical assistant and get full-time work in health care with insurance through her employer, Seawright said.

In her own job as a social worker, she added, some of the clients she works with have Medicaid.

Both her childhood experience and her role as a mental health provider have made her critical of proposals to cut Medicaid, Seawright said — especially one to add work requirements as a condition for adults considered “able-bodied” to enroll in Medicaid.  

“Creating more barriers for people to access the care they need … individuals losing their primary care providers and their specialists, from my perspective, is just a cruel response that is steeped in distrust of those of us who are doing the work day to day,” Seawright said.

Also on the webinar was Brooke Wampole, who lives in northern Wisconsin. She and her husband have a 4-year-old son who was found to have long delays in his development.

About two years ago he was screened and qualified for services and therapies covered by Medicaid programs for children with disabilities, and over time, his clinicians helped him first to “exist, to self-regulate, to see the world around him and not find it to be a threat,” Wampole said.

The family’s regular health insurance “could never cover the cost” those treatments required. “ Medicaid programs “have been absolutely instrumental in our lives.”

In the last year, her son has begun speaking one-syllable words. “My favorites or Mommy and Dada,” Wampole said, then added with a smile, “however, he is pretty partial to talking about trapezoids. And raisins.”

The thought of losing Medicaid coverage “is terrifying,” Wampole said — both because of the loss of services for her son, but also because of its impact on other families.

“I worry what our world looks like without Medicaid,” Wampole said. “Other families, they could be way worse off … and cutting Medicaid could hurt them even more than my family. I don’t want to be part of a system that contributes to that.”

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Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long, nominee for Internal Revenue Service commissioner, testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — Senators tasked with tax writing split along party lines Tuesday praising and grilling former Republican U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service, the agency tasked with enforcing the largest source of U.S. revenue as the country faces record debt and interest costs.

Long, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2023 and previously spent multiple years as a talk radio host, testified to the Senate Finance Committee that he plans to get rid of “stinking thinking” at the IRS and implement a “comprehensive plan” to modernize the agency and “invest in retaining skilled members of the team.”

“This does not mean a bloated agency, but an efficient one where employees have the tools they need to succeed,” Long said.

The agency has lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firing of probationary workers since Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general. Trump said in December he intended to nominate Long for the IRS post.

‘Top-down culture change’

Committee Chair Mike Crapo of Idaho opened the confirmation hearing expressing his confidence in Long, saying he will direct a “sea change” at the agency that will benefit taxpayers.

“President Trump called Congressman Long the ‘consummate people person.’ Congressman Long is very clear that he will make himself available to all IRS employees, no matter their seniority. Moreover, he wants to implement a top-down culture change at the agency,” Crapo said.

The confirmation hearing comes as lawmakers struggle to agree on a budget reconciliation package, which will extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax law and in turn widen IRS responsibilities.

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, said he trusted Long’s work ethic and told him, “We’re going to do a tax bill here in the next couple of months. To be able to get that done, as we did it in 2017, there’ll be a lot of work the IRS has to do to be able to put guidance documents out, to be able to get clear instructions of what that means.”

Nonexistent tribal tax credits

Democrats approached the hearing with skepticism.

The nearly two-hour back-and-forth with Long followed recent revelations that he accepted donations to his defunct Senate campaign shortly after Trump nominated him as the IRS commissioner. Democratic senators on the panel have also called for an investigation into Long’s work with a company that peddled nonexistent tribal tax credits.

“Bottom line, the American people have the right to know whether the future IRS commissioner is a crook,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the panel’s top Democrat.

Long denies any wrongdoing.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, pressed Long about $65,000 he allegedly received for his involvement promoting the fake tax credits for the companies Capital Edge Strategies and White River.

“Knowing that (the credits) are illegal, the IRS has said they’re illegal, how do you stand here before this committee and tell the chairman just a few minutes ago that you have no conflict of interest?” Cortez Masto asked.

Long replied that he’s in compliance with the Office of Government Ethics regarding his nomination and that he “did not have any perception whatsoever that these (credits) did not exist.”

Other Democrats on the panel questioned Long on Trump’s recent statements that he would pull Harvard University’s tax-exempt status over its refusal to comply with demands from the administration.

Wyden characterized Long as a “MAGA devotee” and said that Trump wants to use the IRS “as a cudgel to beat his adversaries into submission.”

14-page letter

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who sent Long a 14-page letter questioning his past, repeatedly asked Long about a statute prohibiting the president from ordering tax audits on specific people or businesses.

“Is it illegal for the President to instruct the IRS to remove nonprofit status from taxpayers?” Warren asked several times.

“I’m not going to have the answer that you need, I apologize,” Long said.

Senate Republicans on the panel questioned Long on how he can improve customer service for taxpayers — despite the party successfully fighting in 2023 to cut new IRS funding under President Joe Biden in 2022.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said the agency is “behind the curve” on technology and that its customer service issues are “out of hand.”

“If confirmed, will you commit to developing a comprehensive IRS modernization plan that prioritizes customer service, identifies critical technology infrastructure needs and ensures greater transparency and audit practices? Yes or no?” Young asked.

“Yes,” Long replied.

“Excellent,” Young said. 

The U.S. House Budget Committee votes on Friday, May 16, 2025 on a massive reconciliation package. The vote failed, 16-21. (Screenshot from House webcast)

WASHINGTON — Republicans suffered a major setback to their “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, when amid conservative objections the U.S. House Budget Committee failed to approve the measure, a crucial step in the process.

In a 16-21 vote, Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania broke from their GOP colleagues to block the bill from moving toward the floor, demanding changes to several provisions.

The breakdown over the 1,116-page bill marks an escalation in the long-running feud between centrist Republicans, who have been cautious about hundreds of billions in spending cuts to safety net programs, and far-right members of the party, who argue the changes are not enough.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said he wants the package on the floor prior to the Memorial Day recess.

Speedier work requirements

Norman said he remains a “hard no” until new work requirements for Medicaid recipients phase in more quickly. As the bill is written, the requirements won’t begin until 2029.

“To phase this in for four years — We’re telling a healthy-bodied, a healthy American that you got four years to get a job. No, your payment stops now,” Norman said.

Brecheen criticized the bill for not going far enough to repeal wind and solar energy tax credits, which he contends are “undermining natural gas jobs.”

“We have to fix this,” he said.

Clyde denounced the measure for not adhering to President Donald Trump’s promise of “right-sizing government,” as Clyde described it. The Georgia Republican also pleaded for lower taxes on firearms and stronger cuts that would put Medicaid on a “sustainable path.”

“Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promised,” Clyde said.

Smucker initially voted ‘yes,’ but then joined his four colleagues to oppose the measure.

Trump wrote on his social media platform shortly before the committee voted that “Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’”

“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

‘A wrecking ball to Medicaid’

Democrats, who as expected unified in voting no against the bill, slammed it as “ugly,” “cruel” and a “betrayal.”

“This bill takes a wrecking ball to Medicaid, on which 1 in 5 Americans and 3 million Ohioans depend for medical care — children, seniors in nursing homes,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who represents northern Ohio. “Please come with me to visit the nursing homes. … Perhaps too many on the other side of the aisle have not had to endure a life that has major challenges.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said the proposed cuts to safety net programs would be “devastating.”

“Their changes will kick millions of Americans off their health care and nutrition assistance. That means more untreated illnesses, more hungry children, more preventable deaths,” she said.

Republican-only bill

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship. 

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending.

The 11 House committees tasked with drafting pieces of the legislation have all debated and approved their measures along party lines.

The Agriculture Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee and Ways and Means Committee all completed their work earlier this week, amid strong objections from Democrats.

Proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, could shift considerable cost-sharing onto states for the first time, presenting challenges for red-state lawmakers who need to explain the bill back home.

More than $600 billion in federal spending cuts to Medicaid during the next decade could also cause some difficulties for moderate Republicans, some of whose constituents are likely to be among the millions of Americans expected to lose their health insurance.

Republicans also have yet to reach an agreement on the state and local tax deduction or SALT, a priority for GOP lawmakers from blue states like California, New Jersey and New York.

The Budget Committee’s role in the process was to package together all of the bills and then send the one massive bill to the Rules Committee, the last stop before floor debate for major legislation.

That won’t be able to happen until after GOP leaders get nearly all the Republican lawmakers on the panel to support the package. 

A measure passed by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee allows individual taxpayers such as waiters and waitresses to deduct qualifying tips earned throughout the year, a tax break that would end in 2028. (Getty Photos)

WASHINGTON — House Republicans advanced the tax portion of the “one big, beautiful” reconciliation package early Wednesday, a step forward in permanently extending, and in some cases expanding, the 2017 tax law and temporarily handing President Donald Trump a win on campaign promises like no tax on tips.

The House Committee on Ways and Means voted along party lines to pass the measure, 26-19, after nearly 18 hours of debate that went through the night. Republicans rejected numerous amendments offered by Democrats, including protecting tax credits meant to combat climate change enacted under Democrats’ own 2022 budget reconciliation law, the Inflation Reduction Act.

The marathon debate occurred as the House Committee on Energy and Commerce debated overnight and into Wednesday afternoon over deep budget cuts, including some to Medicaid assistance for low-income individuals, to pay for the cost of tax provisions.

As of now, the massive tax package is estimated to add $3.8 trillion to the budget deficit over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

If any temporary expansions in the bill are eventually made permanent, it would add roughly $5.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to the CRFB. The official congressional budget score has not yet been released.

Overall the bill is “a very, very big tax cut,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, part of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. “Much of the benefit will go to higher income people.”

Tax brackets, business breaks would continue

The bill permanently extends the underlying tax provisions passed in 2017 under the GOP-backed bill titled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire in 2025.

This means:

• Individual taxpayers would remain in the same tax brackets that were lowered in 2017, and they would continue to see the doubled standard deduction — two of the most costly measures. Additionally, taxpayers will receive a boost up to $2,000 on the standard deduction through 2028.
• Individual brackets would remain at 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%, though the proposal would change how inflation adjustments are calculated, meaning income would be taxed less over time, except for those in the 37% bracket.
• The $2,000 child tax credit, per child, would remain permanent but temporarily increase to $2,500 through 2028. The refundable portion of the credit — meaning how much money taxpayers can get back — would be increased to $1,400, but the amount remains subject to income thresholds, meaning lower income households would receive less of a refund.
• The child tax credit would now only be accessible if the parent submits a Social Security number, as well as a spouse’s if legally married, in addition to the already required Social Security number of each qualifying child.
• On the business side, the corporate tax rate would stay at 21%.
• Business owners who run sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations would see an increase, to 23% up from 20%, in the amount of business income they can deduct from their federal returns, otherwise referred to as the pass-through income deduction.
• Expensing for research and development would be restored through 2029, as well as deductions available to businesses for certain investments, including equipment purchases.

No tax on tips, but only for a few years

Trump promised on the campaign trail to eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security and car loan interest. House Republicans handed him a win in their bill, but only a limited one.

The bill allows individual taxpayers to deduct qualifying tips earned throughout the year, a tax break that would end in 2028. And like the new child tax credit requirement, taxpayers could only take advantage of the deduction by including a Social Security number on their federal tax return as well as their spouse’s SSN, if married.

No taxes on car loan interest would also go into effect through 2028, though taxpayers could only claim it for automobiles that received final assembly in the United States.

Senior citizens with incomes of $75,000 or less, or $150,000 for a married couple, would receive an extra $4,000 discount on taxable income, with the amount decreasing as incomes increase. The tax break would also expire in 2028. The bill does not specify an age for “seniors.”

Highly taxed states still unhappy 

House Republicans raised the cap on the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, that can be deducted, but not enough to please both GOP and Democratic lawmakers who represent highly taxed states like New York and California.

Under the bill the committee advanced Wednesday morning, taxpayers could deduct up to $30,000 — three times the $10,000 ceiling in the 2017 law — from their federal taxable income. The full cap would apply to those making $400,000 or less in annual income but phases down for higher earners.

Raising the cap is costly and unpopular with lawmakers representing lower tax states.

Republican Reps. Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota of New York, and Rep. Young Kim of California, are threatening to vote no on the House floor if the cap isn’t raised. The House GOP cannot lose more than a handful of votes if all Republicans are present.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told reporters Wednesday he didn’t want to “handicap” negotiations by sharing details publicly and that he was talking to the SALT caucus until 1:30 a.m.

“But I will tell you I’m absolutely confident we’re going to be able to work out a compromise that everybody can live with,” he said.

A ‘tragic indifference’ for poor families

The committee’s party-line approval of the bill drew praise and criticism across organizations representing varying interests of Americans.

Kris Cox, director of federal tax policy for the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote on social media that the temporary child tax credit bump does “zilch” for the roughly 17 million children whose parents do not earn enough money to receive a refund check from the credit.

“But it delivers an additional $500-per-kid to higher-income families,” Cox wrote.

The organization also slammed the bill for going “out of its way to take eligibility from 4.5 million US citizen kids who have at least one parent without an SSN.”

Kristen Crowell, executive director of the advocacy group Fair Share America, said in a statement Wednesday that the bill “shows a tragic indifference to the very real struggles of normal, working people.

“In order to save face in front of their constituents, Republicans are hiding behind misleading claims that everyone will see reductions in their taxes,” Crowell said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental protection advocacy organization, estimates that phasing out and altogether eliminating clean energy tax credits would result in higher electricity bills in several states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to an emailed statement.

‘Unshackle the economy’ for businesses

Groups representing businesses across the U.S. praised the House bill as a way to bolster investment and growth opportunities.

Former Republican Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady of Texas released a statement Wednesday on behalf of the Alliance for Competitive Taxation praising the bill as a path to “unshackle the economy from burdensome taxes and unlock new growth.”

“The bill reported out by the House Ways and Means Committee is an encouraging step in that direction and, if implemented with its major pro-growth proposals intact, will help American businesses and workers compete at home and abroad,” Brady said.

The alliance hailed the extension of the 21% corporate tax rate and urged lawmakers to make permanent the research and development expensing, and capital investment deductions.

Kristen Silverberg, president and chief operating officer of the Business Roundtable, said her organization “applauds Chairman Smith and members of the House Ways and Means Committee for advancing a comprehensive, pro-growth tax bill,” referring to GOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri.

“Today’s vote is a critical step forward in securing a more competitive tax system for American businesses and workers,” said Silverberg, whose organization represents 200 CEOs of U.S.-based companies.