A series of markups this week brings the GOP closer than before to advancing Trump’s agenda.
The budget reconciliation process continues as the House GOP progresses towards passing Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”.
The legislation would bind Trump’s presidential agenda to law, enabling him to fulfill the promises he campaigned on before November’s election.
This week, several key committees held markups of their budget reconciliation text.
The Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, and Agriculture committees spent long hours in hearing rooms to pass legislation out of their respective committees.
The Ways and Means Committee passed its tax bill, which would permanently extend Trump’s 2017 cuts. The markup lasted more than 17 hours.
The bill includes tax breaks for businesses, temporarily increases the child tax credit to $2,500, and boosts tax deductions for seniors through 2028.
The bill hikes the SALT cap up to $30,000. Some Republicans are in opposition to that policy and could vote against the final package on the House floor because of it.
Representatives Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler have both said they plan to vote no on the package without a higher SALT cap.
The Energy and Commerce Committee passed its legislation after meeting for more than 26 hours.
The bill includes Medicaid work requirements and cuts to the program, which drew protesters to the hearing. Capitol Police escorted disruptors out of the hearing room and arrested 25 individuals for “illegally demonstrating”.
The hearing largely focused on the cuts to Medicaid, with Democratic committee members holding up photos of constituents that would lose access to the health care program and its benefits.
In response to one of the stories about a constituent named George, Representative Dan Crenshaw said, “I am sorry that people have lied to you. George, I want to tell you, you have nothing to worry about. Your Medicaid is not going anywhere.”
The House Agriculture Committee began its markup around 7:30pm on Tuesday before breaking near midnight and reconvening Wednesday morning.
The committee passed legislation that includes $290 billion in savings from the SNAP program.
The House Budget Committee is the next committee that has yet to markup and assemble the passed pieces of legislation into “one big, beautiful bill” for a full House vote.
The package will then move to the Rules Committee and finally head to the House floor for the full vote.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson set a deadline of the Memorial Day recess for lawmakers in the House to pass the final package. He can only stand to lose three GOP votes on the final bill.
The Congressional Budget Office projects a total savings of $715 billion and 8.6 million people losing health care coverage.
