The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled out a few key Medicaid provisions in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”
MacDonough slashed the “plan to cap states’ use of health care provider taxes to collect more federal Medicaid funding, a proposal that would have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to offset the cost of making President Trump’s corporate tax cuts permanent.”
From Fox News:
Indeed, MacDonough ruled that the harsher Medicaid provider tax rate crackdown in the Senate’s version of the bill did not comport with the Byrd Rule, which provides guardrails for the budget reconciliation process.That ruling, and the stripping out of other provisions that included denying states Medicaid funding for having illegal immigrants on the benefit rolls, preventing illegal immigrants from participating in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and preventing Medicaid and CHIP funding from going toward gender-affirming care, among others, has gutted many of Republicans’ key cost-saving Medicaid changes, and likely set back their plan to put the mammoth bill on Trump’s desk by July 4.
I wonder if Senate Majority Leader John Thune will bring the bill to the floor next week.
Trump hoped to sign the bill by July 4.
The changes angered Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Josh Hawley (R-MO).
The Democrats also pounced on the changes.
“Democrats are continuing to make the case against every provision in this Big, Beautiful Betrayal of a bill that violates Senate rules and hurts families and workers,” stated Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-OR). “Democrats are fighting back against Republicans’ plans to gut Medicaid, dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and kick kids, veterans, seniors, and folks with disabilities off of their health insurance – all to fund tax breaks for billionaires.”
The Republicans could hold “a simple-majority vote on the floor to establish a new precedent, expanding the scope of what is eligible under reconciliation” to escape the parliamentarian’s decision.
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