February 15, 2025
By Marc Stier
I’m sure many of you have been following the news over the last few weeks from Washington, DC, with anguish, worry, and despair. We have seen President Trump and his factotum, Elon Musk (or is it the other way around?), engage in a series of illegal and unconstitutional acts. We have seen a cut-off of foreign aid that is already leading to deaths abroad. And we have seen an attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs that aim to roll back the all-too-little progress we have made in reducing the barriers that stand in the way of women and Black people.
As I wrote last week in a short blog post, Connecting the Dots, as bad as these actions are, they don’t stand alone. They are meant to push forward the Republican plan to make another round of deep cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other important programs to pay for another Trump tax giveaway to the ultra-rich and wealthy corporations. We have been warning about this plan for a few months now.
On Thursday, the other shoe dropped.
The chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees released drafts of budget resolutions bills that pave the way for the tax cuts and Medicaid and SNAP cuts we have feared.
Just to remind you, a budget resolution doesn’t do anything itself. It is a plan for changes in policy that must be formulated by committees that produce legislation. The plan sets a timeline for them to act. Then their legislation is packaged into a reconciliation bill that enacts the plan all at once. And what is special about both a budget resolution and a reconciliation bill is that neither are subject to the Senate filibuster.
The two bills are different—the House bill is far bigger. The lowlights are
- directing the House Ways and Means Committee to make $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 9 years.
- The budget resolution specifically calls for the extension of the individual tax cuts enacted in 2017.
- We are not quite sure if the extension is for 8, 9, or 10 years, but we suspect it is 9. All proposals that will be implemented are over the same period of time.
- increasing the debt limit by $4 trillion.
- implementing $1.5 trillion in cuts to food, health care, housing, education, etc. Different committees were given the responsibility of coming up with the cuts in the following amounts:
- Energy and Commerce Committee (Medicaid and Health) $880 billion
- Agriculture (SNAP) $230 billion
- Education $330 billion
- ending the ACA premium tax credits, which make coverage more affordable for about half the people on the health care exchanges.
- adding $90 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security for deportation.
- adding $110 billion in funding for the Department of Justice for the detention and prosecution of immigrants.
The Senate budget resolution is the first of two, and it is even vaguer than the House bill.
The resolution
- includes a $342 billion in new spending; the two biggest parts are assigned to:
- Homeland Security Committee, $175 billion.
- Armed Services Committee, $150 billion.
- directs four committees to make cuts totaling at least $1 billion with few details about the cuts should be distributed among the following four committees.
- Health, Education, Labor, and Pension
- Agriculture
- Education
- Energy and Resources
- instructs the Senate Finance Committee to extend the 2017 individual tax cuts, which would cost over $4 trillion.
But little public information is available. While neither bill provides details about either the tax or spending cuts, our understanding is that the individual committees in both the House and Senate are already meeting to plan them.
The timeline for the budget process has accelerated. This is what they plan.
- February 12 — Senate Budget Committee markup of the first of two budget resolutions
- February 13 — House Budget Committee markup of one budget resolution to set up a comprehensive budget reconciliation bill with budget cuts and tax cuts
- February 17, week of — recess week for House
- February 18–21 — full Senate takes up/passes the budget resolution
- Feb 24, week of — House takes up a full budget resolution
- March, sometime —House committees mark up their parts of the reconciliation bill
- March 3, week of — Senate committees mark up their parts of reconciliation bill with budget cuts
- March 17, week of — both House/Senate out for recess
- April, sometime —House passes reconciliation bill followed by Senate passage
There are likely to be some delays in this process, especially on the House side. It appears that the Senate Republican leadership has a commitment from a majority of senators to vote for the plan. But the House Republican leadership does not have a similar commitment. Republicans have a very narrow majority and multiple factions that oppose one another on some matters.
Given those divisions, there is still a chance to influence what the House does. We understand that, in large part, because of events we have done and contacts you have made, some Republican members of the House in Pennsylvania have some qualms about the deep Medicaid cuts.
So now is the time for all of us to keep doing what we can to stop or modify the budget resolutions.
1. The first thing we ask you to do is send your member of the House and PA’s two senators an email letter using our online tool.
2. Next, please call your members of Congress. Your message can be very simple. Tell them your name, your zip code, and that you oppose extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and any cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
- Call Senator McCormick at 202-224-6324.
- Call Senator Fetterman at 202-224-4254.
- You can find House members here.
3. Join protests, make legislative visits, and do other actions in your communities. You can find a list of upcoming actions here.
4. Do you want to do set up something yourself or with friends to influence members of Congress? Whether you want to visit your members of Congress or hold an educational event, a rally or a house party, we can help you organize it and recruit people to attend. Someone on our staff may be able to come out and make a presentation as well. Contact our campaign director Dwayne Heisler at Heisler@pennpolicy.org.