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February 28, 2025


 

News

Overview: The House of Representatives passed a budget resolution this week. The bill would extend the 2017 tax cuts from the first Trump administration and make new ones. The bill targets $300 billion for defense and border security, raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years, and adds almost $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. Since there is a need for offsets and since the administration said no to any cuts to Medicare and Social Security, Medicaid seems the likely target. The Senate had approved its own budget framework last week and both versions need to be reconciled.Cuts to Medicaid make some senators uneasy, so the Senate may seek major changes to the House bill. Meanwhile, another stop-gap extension seems more likely by March 14, when the present one expires, so any final reconciliation bill can be completed.

Members of the CCUSA Government Relations team continued their visits to new members of Congress.

Call to action: The CCUSA Government Relations team decided to add a new regular paragraph for the Washington Weekly, entitled "Call to action." The reason is the fast-paced environment of executive actions we are in at the moment, and we want to help keep our readers informed. In this paragraph, we will place information that you may want to act on but leave more urgent matters to our "Action Alerts ([link removed])," that hopefully you are already aware of. If not, be sure to sign up for them.

Economy: In the week ending February 22, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims ([link removed]) was 242,000, an increase of 22,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 219,000 to 220,000. The 4-week moving average was 224,000, an increase of 8,500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 215,250 to 215,500.

 

Trivia

Q. Ash Wednesday is next week, beginning the season of Lent (here's an article ([link removed]) to get you started). Where do the ashes come from?

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