The Senate draft also enhances Trump’s proposed new tax break for seniors, with a bigger $6,000 deduction for low- to moderate-income senior households earning no more than $75,000 a year for singles, $150,000 for couples.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the chairman, said the proposal would prevent a tax hike and achieve “significant savings” by slashing green energy funds “and targeting waste, fraud and abuse.”
This comes as protests over deporting migrants have erupted nationwide — including the stunning handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla last week in Los Angeles — and as deficit hawks such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are questioning the vast spending on Homeland Security.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that the Senate GOP’s draft “cuts to Medicaid are deeper and more devastating than even the Republican House’s disaster of a bill.”
As the package now moves to the Senate, the changes to Medicaid, SALT and green energy programs are part of a series of tradeoffs GOP leaders are making as they try to push the package to passage with their slim majorities, with almost no votes to spare.
But criticism of the Senate’s version came quickly after House Speaker Mike Johnson warned senators off making substantial changes.
“We have been crystal clear that the SALT deal we negotiated in good faith with the Speaker and the White House must remain in the final bill,” the co-chairs of the House SALT caucus, Reps. Young Kim, R-Calif., and Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., said in a joint statement Monday.
Some of the largest cost savings in the package come from the GOP plan to impose new work requirements on able-bodied single adults, ages 18 to 64 and without dependents, who receive Medicaid, the health care program used by 80 million Americans.
While the House first proposed the new Medicaid work requirement, it exempted parents with dependents. The Senate’s version broadens the requirement to include parents of children older than 14, as part of their effort to combat waste in the program and push personal responsibility.
People would need to work 80 hours a month or be engaged in a community service program to qualify.
One Republican, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, has joined a few others pushing to save Medicaid from steep cuts — including to the so-called provider tax that almost all states levy on hospitals as a way to help fund their programs.
The Senate plan proposes phasing down that provider tax, which is now up to 6%. Starting in 2027, the Senate looks to gradually lower that threshold until it reaches 3.5% in 2031, with exceptions for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.
Hawley slammed the Senate bill’s changes on the provider tax. “This needs a lot of work. It’s really concerning and I’m really surprised by it,” he said. “Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape.”
The Senate also keeps in place the House’s proposed new $35-per-service co-pay imposed on some Medicaid patients who earn more than the poverty line, which is about $32,000 a year for a family of four, with exceptions for some primary, prenatal, pediatric and emergency room care.
Conservative Republicans say the cuts overall don’t go far enough, and they oppose the bill’s provision to raise the national debt limit by $5 trillion to allow more borrowing to pay the bills.
“We’ve got a ways to go on this one,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
