WASHINGTON (AP) —
Chiseling away at President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Rolling back the green energy tax breaks from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
At its core, the Republican “big, beautiful bill” is more than just an extension of tax breaks approved during President Donald Trump’s first term at the White House.
The package is an attempt by Republicans to undo, little by little, the signature domestic achievements of the past two Democratic presidents.
“We’re going to do what we said we were going to do,” Speaker Mike Johnson said after House passage last month.
While the aim of the sprawling 1,000-page plus bill is to preserve an estimated $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that would otherwise expire at year’s end if Congress fails to act — and add some new ones, including no taxes on tips — the spending cuts pointed at the Democratic-led programs are causing the most political turmoil.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that 10.9 million fewer people would have health insurance under the GOP bill, including 1.4 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal status who are in state-funded programs. At the same time, lawmakers are being hounded by businesses in states across the nation who rely on the green energy tax breaks for their projects.
As the package moves from the House to the Senate, the simmering unrest over curbing the Obama and Biden policies shows just how politically difficult it can be to slash government programs once they become part of civic life.
“When he asked me, what do you think the prospects are for passage in the Senate? I said, good — if we don’t cut Medicaid,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., recounting his conversation last week with Trump. “And he said, I’m 100% supportive of that.”
Health care worries
Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in 2010, or Biden’s inflation act in 2022. Both were approved using the same budget reconciliation process now being employed by Republicans to steamroll Trump’s bill past the opposition.
Even still, sizable coalitions of GOP lawmakers are forming to protect aspects of both of those programs as they ripple into the lives of millions of Americans.
Hawley, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and others are wary of changes to Medicaid and other provisions in the bill that would result in fewer people being able to access health care programs.
At the same time, crossover groupings of House and Senate Republicans have launched an aggressive campaign to preserve, at least for some time, the green energy tax breaks that business interests in their states are relying on to develop solar, wind and other types of energy production.
Murkowski said one area she’s “worried about” is the House bill’s provision that any project not under construction within 60 days of the bill becoming law may no longer be eligible for those credits.
“These are some of the things we’re working on,” she said.
The concerns are running in sometimes opposite directions and complicating the work of GOP leaders who have almost no votes to spare in the House and Senate as they try to hoist the package over Democratic opposition and onto the president’s desk by the Fourth of July.
While some Republicans are working to preserve the programs from cuts, the budget hawks want steeper reductions to stem the nation’s debt load. The CBO said the package would add $2.4 trillion to deficits over the decade.
After a robust private meeting with Trump at the White House this week, Republican senators said they were working to keep the bill on track as they amend it for their own priorities.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the president “made the pitch and the argument for why we need to get the bill done.”
The disconnect is reminiscent of Trump’s first term, when Republicans promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, only to see their effort collapse in dramatic fashion when the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, voted thumbs down for the bill on the House floor.
Battle over Medicaid
In the 15 years since Obamacare became law, access to health care has grown substantially. Some 80 million people are now enrolled in Medicaid, and the Kaiser Family Foundation reports 41 states have opted to expand their coverage. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to all adults with incomes up to about $21,500 for an individual, or almost $29,000 for a two-person household.
While Republicans no longer campaign on ending Obamacare, advocates warn that the changes proposed in the big bill will trim back at access to health care.
The bill proposes new 80 hours of monthly work or community service requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, age 18 to 64, with some exceptions. It also imposes twice-a-year eligibility verification checks and other changes.
Republicans argue that they want to right-size Medicaid to root out waste, fraud and abuse and ensure it’s there for those who need it most, often citing women and children.
“Medicaid was built to be a temporary safety net for people who genuinely need it — young, pregnant women, single mothers, the disabled, the elderly,” Johnson told The Associated Press.
“But when when they expanded under Obamacare, it not only thwarted the purpose of the program, it started draining resources.”
Initially, the House bill proposed starting the work requirements in January 2029, as Trump’s term in the White House would be coming to a close. But conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus negotiated for a quicker start date, in December 2026, to start the spending reductions sooner.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said the changes are an Obamacare rollback by another name.
“It decimates our health care system, decimates our clean energy system,” Schumer of New York said in an interview with the AP.
The green energy tax breaks involve not only those used by buyers of electric vehicles, like Elon Musk’s Tesla line, but also the production and investment tax credits for developers of renewables and other energy sources.
The House bill had initially proposed a phaseout of those credits over the next several years. But again the conservative Freedom Caucus engineered the faster wind-down — within 60 days of the bill’s passage.
“Not a single Republican voted for the Green New Scam subsidies,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on social media. “Not a single Republican should vote to keep them.”
“REPEAL THE GREEN NEW SCAM!” reposted Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a Freedom Caucus leader.
