Senate megabill would explode debt and kick 11.8 million off Medicaid: ‘Our fiscal house is basically on fire’
New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office have revealed that Senate Republicans’ version of Donald Trump’s spending package would lead to more Americans losing health coverage than the version of the president’s flagship legislation that passed the House last month.
The legislation would push 11.8 million Americans off insurance by 2034, according to the report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Over the same period, federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be cut by $1.1 trillion. More than $1 trillion of the cuts would be made to Medicaid.
The estimates confirm the concerns of some Republicans who are worried about cuts to Medicaid, which amount to the steepest cuts to the federal healthcare program in history. Some Republicans, worried about the deficit and national debt, have pressed for further cuts, while others fear what deep cuts mean for their constituents.
The estimates also clash with Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid apart from removing what he describes as fraud and waste.
Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray slammed the bill in a speech on the Senate floor on Sunday,.
“If you think you can look the American people in the face and tell them we have to bring down the debt after passing what might be the most expensive bill in history, if you think you can do that and then be taken seriously, you know what, if you believe that, maybe you are foolish enough to think that zero and a trillion are the same,” she said.
“I can tell you right now, if this happens, we will all laugh you out of the room because we have never seen anything like this, not in my time here in the Senate, not in my time on this planet,” she added. “We are not going to let anyone forget that you’re trashing the rules in order to pass this egregious bill.”
Over a decade, the bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt, according to the CBO. The version passed by the House would have added $2.4 trillion.
The public currently holds about $29 trillion in debt, with the CBO expecting the government to borrow a further $21 trillion over the next 10 years, leading to the assessment that the Republican legislation would worsen an already bad fiscal forecast.
The $3.3 trillion estimate is also an undercount, as it doesn’t include further borrowing costs, which would push the legislation’s full addition to the debt closer to $4 trillion.
“Our fiscal house is basically on fire,” Democratic Senator Gary Peters said in remarks on the Senate floor on Sunday. “But if our Republican colleagues jam through this bill, it’s not going to pour water on that fire. It’s going to pour gasoline on those flames.”
Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are also driving the costs.
The president’s 2017 tax cuts are set to expire this year, but Republicans want to extend them — amounting to another $3.8 trillion hit to the budget.
