WASHINGTON—April 10 was a bad day for workers and women in the Republican-run U.S. House. Lawmakers approved two major items in the Donald Trump regime’s agenda that would hurt both, then quit for a two-week Passover-Easter recess. When you pile the tax cut for the wealthy into a so-called “reconciliation” bill that will slash federal spending on women, families, and everyone but the rich, it became a really terrible week. Labor and its allies lost no time in coming out to fight against the latest assault on working people by the GOP.
“The House reconciliation bill mandates not just the tax cut but an $880 billion 10-year cut in Medicaid and elimination of feeding programs in U.S. schools, cuts in food stamps and potential cuts in Medicare and Social Security. It’s worse than its Senate counterpart,” wrote AFL-CIO Legislative Director Jody Calemine. It shows “harsher spending cuts and increased fiscal recklessness.”
“Using voodoo math,” the House reconciliation bill “sets the stage for $5.3 trillion or more in tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the ultra-rich and largest corporations. Budget manipulation cannot conceal the underlying neglect that threatens the health and economic security of millions.”
One big-ticket GOP measure passed last week, the so-called SAVE Act, takes women’s voting rights away. And the other, reconciliation, clears the way for Trump’s $4.5 trillion-$5.3 trillion tax cut for corporations and the rich.
To even start work on their tax cut for the rich, however, lawmakers had to approve that spending blueprint. It squeaked through, 216-214, after an all-night bargaining session between House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and right-wingers who were concerned the Senate version of it didn’t cut enough from people programs.
The tax cut would extend the already record 2017 Trump-GOP tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations. Needless to say, the corporate class lobbied for the cut, which would put money in their pockets, and take it away from programs for the people. They oppose federal spending, they say, unless it involves subsidies for them.
Some estimates put the 10-year cost of the Trump tax cuts as high as $7 trillion.
The AFL-CIO’s Calemine said, “This budget plan is set to make life more difficult for millions of working individuals. To fund these tax cuts for the wealthy, the resolution proposes drastic spending cuts that would impact families who depend on Medicaid for healthcare,” with millions of people losing coverage and “888,000 jobs lost in 2026 alone.
“The cuts would threaten to shutter hospitals and community health centers. Medicaid funding also supports the salaries of school-based health professionals, such as speech pathologists, occupational therapists, and school nurses. It also pays for critical services like physical therapy, mental health counseling, and specialized care for students with disabilities. Without these funds, schools could lose the ability to provide essential services.”
The House’s reconciliation bill “would take food from families and children, the elderly, disabled and veterans,” Calemine added.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, which helps at least 40 million people, would be cut by 20%, leaving schools and families scrounging for funds to feed hungry kids. And without SNAP, local grocery stores would see lower sales and higher layoffs.
By contrast, that same measure would add $175 million for Trump’s illegal migrant deportations.
“The budget resolution would also impose deep cuts to federal programs that support students and colleges—while also introducing tax changes that could make it more expensive for students to afford college. Shifts in tax policy called for by this resolution could also put at risk hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country in energy, manufacturing, and other sectors,” Calemine said.
Must not be stuck again
“Working families must not be stuck, again, with the bill for trillions of dollars in tax giveaways for billionaires and big corporations. We urge you to vote against” the reconciliation bill, “and instead pursue a budget that supports working people and their families.”
“We’re here to make it clear: Hands off everyday Americans struggling to make ends meet,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., declared.
The House’s ruling Republicans didn’t listen. They also didn’t listen when the Democrats warned against the measure, HR22, the so-called SAVE Act, which lawmakers passed, this time with four Democratic defections, after an early-morning floor debate.
The vote was 220-208. The defectors were Reps. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, D-Ore., Jared Golden, D-Maine, Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash. Case holds a safe seat, but the other three don’t.
The immediate impact of the Save Act’s main provisions is to disenfranchise approximately 71 million people, overwhelmingly women, by throwing out of the polls and off the voting rolls anyone whose ID at the voting booth does not exactly match the name they used to initially register to vote. It would also mandate more frequent and invasive voter roll purges.
The people most in danger of losing their rights to vote would be older African Americans, who lack birth certificates or other forms of proof of citizenship, and women who registered under their maiden names but now, on driver’s licenses or government-issued voter ID cards, use their married names.
The long-range impact of the Save Act’s restrictions is to reduce the number of voters who can oppose the hegemony of the radical right, its corporate class backers, and the white nationalists who make up a large part of the Republican electoral machine. Disenfranchising foes lets those groups perpetuate their political power and economic oppression of the rest of the nation, through legislation.
It also would ban non-citizen voting, which is already illegal. In a test of 23.5 million votes cast in 2020 in states which already have voter ID requirements, probers found 30 non-citizen voters.
Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., led the opposition, calling the measure a solution in search of a problem.
“Together with President Trump’s recent voting restrictive executive order, the Save Act would cripple American elections,” said Morelle, who represents Rochester and its surrounding area. “It would end voter registration in the United States as we know it. The Save Act would end mail-in registration… Citizens would have to appear in person at an election office and bring with them various documents and forms to register to vote.
“Just to exercise your fundamental inalienable rights as a citizen of this country, Republicans would force Americans into a paperwork nightmare, burying voter registration under a mountain of bureaucracy and red tape.”
Even women who changed their names to escape domestic abusers would lose the right to vote, Morelle said. He called that “truly shocking.” And voters who need passports to prove their IDs when they register—but don’t have them now—will have to shell out $135 and wait weeks for the passports, too, he noted.
Ironically, though Morelle didn’t say so, that requirement hurts Republican women more than their Democratic neighbors, because fewer women, especially in red states, have passports.
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