WASHINGTON—As the House’s ruling Republicans passed a budget blueprint that takes Medicaid and healthcare away from millions for the fiscal year starting October 1, the AFL-CIO and a hastily assembled coalition of progressive organizations campaigned against it.
Some 214 House Democrats voted “no”—opposing the Republican Donald Trump administration’s deep cuts in health, education and other domestic spending to fund yet another tax cut for billionaires and the rich.
But in the end only one of the 218 voting Republicans defected, and the GOP budget blueprint—giving the corporate class what it wanted—passed 217-215.
“This budget resolution is an attack on the jobs, families and communities of everyday Americans. We call on every member of Congress to stand with the working people of this country and vote ‘no,’” federation President Liz Shuler declared.
The Republican budget blueprint calls for cutting $1.5 trillion-$2 trillion in spending over the next decade, with $880 billion from Medicaid alone. Federal education aid would decline by 80%. Food stamp spending would be drastically cut, as would Labor Department enforcement against corporate lawbreakers, among other spending.
The criminal corporate class whose campaign contributions and dark money fueled the Republican majority—and Trump’s 2024 electoral vote win—welcomes the House Republicans’ budget blueprint. It gives them a huge tax cut at the expense of the rest of us. It cuts programs the non-rich depend on, from food safety to air traffic control to fixing dilapidated roads, railroads, bridges and airports.
“While Elon Musk,” Trump’s multibillionaire puppeteer, “is busy trying to fire the federal workforce and gut the government services we all rely on, Congress is gearing up to pass a massive tax giveaway to giant corporations and the ultra-wealthy on the backs of working people,” Shuler warned.
“The Republican budget bill… slashes programs like Medicaid and food assistance for children, taking away care from grandparents in nursing homes, premature babies in the neo-natal intensive care unit, and leaving kids hungry.
“It also puts millions of Americans’ jobs at risk, including nursing home and home care workers, substance abuse counselors, midwives, and hospital and community health care center workers, along with jobs across food processing and production.
“These deep, unnecessary cuts will hit rural communities and poorer red states hardest, forcing those state and local governments to stretch what little budget they have even further. Everyone’s jobs, from librarians and public utility workers to EMTs and firefighters, could be at risk,” Shuler said.
The rural communities and the poorer states are also the Trump-GOP “red” states whose voters cast their ballots for the budget-slashing felonious chief executive. In town meetings with Republicans during the congressional recess, those voters showed “buyer’s remorse,” loudly and angrily.
The House Republicans warred among themselves. A small band of moderates opposed Medicaid cuts and other slashes that could endanger Social Security and Medicare. A larger group, the hard-right so-called “Freedom Caucus,” wanted to cut the three programs and other federal social spending. Both groups got “assurances” from GOP leaders and fell into line.
Left war spending in tact
Both groups left higher war spending intact. The hard-right group wanted to pave the way for a $4.5 trillion tax cut for the corporations whose lobbyists back the GOP, and for the ultra-rich, such as Musk. The war between the two sides stretched into the evening. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was reduced to “prayer” to try to maneuver the budget blueprint through. His prayers were answered.
The coalition of progressives, assembled outside the Capitol, didn’t make it easier for the GOP.
They put pressure on lawmakers to defeat the GOP budget blueprint—and the tax cut with it—by showing how the slashes would hurt people in the rest of the U.S. “outside the Beltway.” The corporate class, of course, hired high-priced D.C. lobbyists to work the lawmakers for the budget, said a prime progressive supporter, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
“We hear Trump say he won’t cut Social Security and Medicaid,” which serves 72 million people, Kate Lujan Redling, board chair of the People’s Lobby of Chicago, told the press conference outside the Capitol. “But we see the writing on the wall: $880 billion from Medicaid funneled into tax breaks.
“If Medicaid is cut, millions of Americans will lose their care. That’s violence.” And when they do, they’ll jam already overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, Redling warned.
The GOP budget blueprint would also clear the way for more Trump-ordered ICE raids arresting brown-skinned people, migrants or not. That concerns Glicerio Zurita, of Vancouver, Wash., an organizer with the One America coalition there.
“Immigrants are contributing to our country every day. Our enemies aren’t the immigrants or the new arrivals. It’s the billionaires…They don’t care about the rising cost of living. They want us to fight each other so we don’t fight back against them,” he said.
Progressive lawmakers also joined the fray and promised to fight the budget blueprint on the House floor, overriding recalcitrant “let’s make a deal” attitudes that sometimes arise among House and especially Senate Democratic leaders.
“We refuse to let Donald Trump and his unelected billionaire buddy, Elon Musk—who, when he got here was undocumented—-do this” budget blueprint to “distract you from their $4.5 trillion tax cut,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. “We can’t let them scapegoat and criminalize immigrants” through the budget blueprint. “Immigrants are us.”
“In 2022, immigrant households paid $579 billion in taxes” much of it in federal withholding for Social Security and Medicare, Jayapal added. “Elon Musk’s company paid zero. He personally paid 3-1/2%” of his income “in taxes,” far less than regular taxpayers, she noted.
“We are raising our voices” for the taxpayers outside the Capitol, promised Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. “We are legislating, litigating and agitating” in the streets against the Trump-GOP budget blueprint and the Musk-Trump cuts, she said. “The Republicans are not thinking about regular people, ever…Don’t take your eye off the ball, and fight corporate greed.”
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