As you’ve probably heard by now, the “big, beautiful” spending bill passed by the House last month is very, very unpopular. How unpopular? So unpopular that just 23% of Americans support it. So unpopular that Elon Musk called it a “disgusting abomination.” So unpopular that, after it passed, a bunch of House Republicans said they wouldn’t have voted for it if they had known what was in it.
While reasons for so thoroughly disliking the bill vary, some of the very big ones include the trillions it adds to the national debt, the fact that most of the tax cuts go to the richest households, and the deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. Of course, the legislation that passed the House is not its final form; right now it’s in the Senate’s hands, where lawmakers have an opportunity to make it less horrible. But, surprise! They decided to go in a slightly different direction, i.e. take a near-universally disliked bill and make it even more unpopular.
On Monday, Senate Republicans unveiled their version of the legislation, which now includes even bigger cuts to Medicaid, including additional work requirements. While the House version also included work requirements, it spared parents with dependents. In the Senate text, the requirement includes parents with kids over the age of 14. As a reminder, before the Senate got its hands on the bill, concerned constituents were already sounding the alarm about the millions of Americans who would lose insurance as a result of the cuts. Voters in Iowa warned Senator Joni Ernst that people will die as a result—to which she responded “we are all going to die,” and then doubled down on that sentiment. Under the Senate’s version, even more people will be at risk. The cuts, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “are deeper and more devastating than even the Republican House’s disaster of a bill.” But don’t just take his word for it! Republican representative Jeff Van Drew called the Senate bill “political stupidity” and “political suicide,” asking, “Why would you hurt these people?” (Presumably that question was rhetorical, but the answer is probably that Republicans don’t actually care about lower-income and working-class people.)
Of course, there are other lawmakers who don’t like the Senate version, but for different reasons, like that it doesn’t do enough to accelerate the devastating effects of climate change. Speaking to reporters, Representative Chip Roy was irate that the new text proposes a slower phaseout of some green energy tax breaks, saying: “We have major backsliding on the Inflation Reduction Act ‘green new scam’ subsidies. We’re trying to just get even half at this point of the reductions the IRA locked in place, and now the Senate is pushing back on that. That’s a real problem.”
Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office said that the House version of the bill would do more harm than good to the households in the bottom 10% of income, while Yale’s Budget Lab found that a whopping 80% of households would be worse off if the House bill were to become law. While similar analysis has not yet been performed for the Senate bill, it’s probably safe to assume that it also disproportionately helps the wealthy. “It is an enormous transfer from people with low and middle income to people with high incomes,” Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Axios.
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