A memo from deficit hawks within the Home Freedom Caucus and others tore into the Senate-passed model of the “large, lovely invoice” of President Trump’s tax lower and spending priorities as GOP leaders rush to attempt to go the laws earlier than their self-imposed July 4 deadline.
Titled “The Senate OBBA Failures,” the memo shared with The Hill on Wednesday takes goal at Senate Majority Chief John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over the invoice’s not adhering to the Home framework, which known as for dollar-for-dollar spending cuts to offset tax cuts.
“This was not what Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson promised,” it stated.
Punchbowl Information first reported on the three-page memo.
Whereas Home GOP leaders goal to go the megabill as quickly as Wednesday, opposition from deficit hawks is threatening the plan to ship the invoice to Trump by Independence Day.
Home Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) stated that with out these adjustments, a bunch of members in his caucus and past will sink the procedural rule vote to tee up debate on the invoice, dealing an embarrassing blow to GOP leaders.
“Hopefully it goes back to Rules [Committee], gets moved closer to the House position, and the Senate gets called back into town,” Harris stated. “Senate never should have left town. The president asked us to stay until this issue was resolved, and the Senate left town.”
The memo additionally criticizes the Senate for softening the phaseout of inexperienced power incentives, saying it “fails to terminate Biden’s ‘Green New Scam.’”
A few of the complaints take care of measures that had been axed by the Senate parliamentarian for not complying with the Byrd Rule, which dictates that finances reconciliation laws should be instantly associated to finances issues. The particular course of that can be utilized as soon as per fiscal yr bypasses the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and the necessity to get Democratic assist for the invoice, enabling Republicans to push the invoice to Trump’s desk alongside occasion traces.
The memo says that the Senate “stripped key protection against illegals getting medicaid,” for example — in reference to the parliamentarian axing a Home provision that punished states that fund Medicaid advantages for migrants who entered the U.S. illegally.
And whereas it dings the laws for making a provision that will defund Deliberate Parenthood final for only one yr and for eliminating “the prohibition on Medicaid and CHIP funding for transgender surgical procedures,” these had been additionally adjustments made on account of parliamentarian rulings.
It slams the Senate for altering new work necessities for diet help advantages. Whereas the Home known as for work necessities to use to these with kids older than 7, the Senate upped that age to 14.
And it tore into provisions added to the invoice on the final minute to safe assist from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), together with expensing for meals on Alaskan fishing boats and particular waivers for work necessities and cost-sharing necessities for diet advantages.
“In total, the Senate gutted House spending cuts and added new spending to the tune of more than $400 billion. Absent these cumulative changes, the Senate bill would have at least been in the ballpark of the House framework (before wraparound amendment changes),” the three-pager stated.
“These losses include (1) gutting House reforms to SNAP; (2) undermining the House’s reforms to student loan programs; (3) slashing the House’s endowment tax on ‘woke’ elite universities; (4) eliminating President Trump’s provision to close tax loopholes abused by professional sports team owners; (5) massively expanding tax subsidies for semiconductors, despite the President’s call to ‘get rid of the CHIPS Act’ during his address to Congress, in addition to other swampy tax expenditures like a tax break tied to rum imported from U.S. territories; and (6) adding tens of billions in new spending for NASA, the Coast Guard, farm programs, and more.”
Nathaniel Weixel contributed.
