As you will recall, the House Republicans passed their Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget reconciliation bill a few weeks ago (H.R. 1), and I voted against it.  The Senate took up its version of the bill last week, and voted on the bill on Monday.  As a reminder, this reconciliation process makes it possible for the Senate to pass the bill with a simple majority (51 votes) rather than the usual 60 votes.  That means they did not need–and did not seek–Democratic votes.  After 27 hours of votes on the bill and proposed amendments, the Senate passed its bill on Tuesday by a vote of 51-50.  Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.  Although the Senate modified the bill, its overall goals and effects are the same: cutting spending on health care, food assistance, and programs Americans rely on to extend tax cuts that principally benefit the wealthiest Americans while increasing deficit spending and the overall national debt.

Because the Senate passed a different version of the bill, the House is required to consider the Senate version of the bill–by either having a conference between the House and the Senate or having the House vote to pass the identical bill.  Rather than confer with Senators on the differences between them, the House reconvened on Tuesday to consider the revised and substantially rewritten 870-page bill because President Trump said he wanted to sign it on the Fourth of July.

On Wednesday morning, I joined my House Democratic colleagues on the steps to the Capitol to stand against the bill and for the American people.

After that, I returned to the House Chamber for debate on the bill and related procedural matters.  Although the House allotted only one hour for debate for this bill, procedural votes on whether to debate the bill and a related point of order took most of the day.  The House began debating the bill at 3:30am on Thursday morning.  

After members of the principal committees–the House Budget Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee–debated the bill, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke for all House Democrats in objecting to the bill.  While time for debate is set, and often allows only one or two minutes per speaker, the House Rules provide that three people–the Majority Leader, the Minority Leader, and the Speaker of the House–can speak for an unlimited time, what we call a “magic minute.”  Leader Jeffries gave the longest speech on the House floor in history, beginning around 5:00am and speaking until after 1:30pm: 8 hours and 44 minutes.  You can watch some or all of it at the link below:

After Leader Jeffries gave his record-setting and inspiring speech, House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke briefly to the assembled chamber in a speech that was small and dishonest, and directed at an audience of one.

Following debate, the House voted on the Senate version of the bill, without any amendments from the House.  I voted no.  Here is why: The Republican budget reconciliation bill betrays the principles and the people of the United States.  It does not solve problems—it creates them, cutting funding for programs people in our district and across the country rely on, raising costs for American families to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and increasing deficit spending by $3.4 trillion over the next ten years.  It was bad enough, and the Senate made it worse.  

The bill presented to the House for consideration represents the largest transfer of wealth from working Americans to the wealthiest Americans in our history.  Specifically, the Senate Amendment to H.R. 1:

• Eliminates access to health care for nearly 17 million Americans through cuts to Medicaid spending and Affordable Care Act tax credits;
• Triggers $535 million in cuts to Medicare;
• Imposes unnecessary and burdensome red tape for on Medicaid beneficiaries;
• Allows states to impose annual and lifetime dollar limits on benefits for kids enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP);
• Slashes states’ ability to tax health care providers—cutting more than $225 billion in revenues states rely on to finance their Medicaid programs;
• Kicks elderly and disabled people who need long-term care out of their homes if their home value has increased over the years—no matter how little income they have;
• Leaves more than 1 million Americans without access to reproductive health care, including cancer screenings and birth control, by eliminating Planned Parenthood centers nationwide from participating in federal programs;
• Takes away food assistance for millions of people, including veterans, cutting more than $185 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP), previously known as food stamps;
• Cuts incentives for clean energy projects already in development; and
• Raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, adding a projected $3.4 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years.

These are a few of the reasons I voted against the bill. But there is much more in it.  If you listen to my Republican colleagues, you will hear something different.  I listened to them during multiple debates, including this week.  I want to respond to a few of those arguments here.  Perhaps even more important, I want to share with you links to some additional resources and information that you can review:

• The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the original House bill in June and put out several papers, which you can find here.
• The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has analyzed the Senate bill in several recent articles and charts and found that the bill adds $4.1 trillion to the debt through 2034, borrowing more than any reconciliation bill in history, and that if made permanent it would add more to the debt than the CARES Act, American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and CHIPS and Science Act combined; worsens deficits even more by using dynamic scoring; and “relies on budget gimmicks including arbitrary expirations, phony baselines, and fantastical growth assumptions.”
• The Democrats on the House Budget Committee put together an interactive platform where you can see the impact on our congressional district and others.
• The Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee released a new analysis showing the number of people who are estimated to lose health care coverage in each state because of the provisions in the bill. In Texas, that number is 1,671,965.

Despite non-partisan analyses and input on real-life input from people in our district and across the country, House Republicans continue to repeat the same talking points that they are just getting rid of “waste, fraud, and abuse” in these programs.  The data says otherwise.  And, it’s also important to note here that the administration is actually firing the people responsible for finding waste, fraud, and abuse across government agencies and in the Department of Justice.  You don’t stop the problem by firing the cops on the beat.  They also have said that those who truly deserve these programs like Medicaid and SNAP will not be affected.  The data says otherwise, too.  As do the stories.  And, they also point to the extension of the tax cuts and the implementation of new tax policies like no tax on tips or overtime as providing real relief when the details of these policies say otherwise.  Republicans claim that if they don’t vote for the bill the expiration of the tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of this year will result in the biggest tax increase in history.  It should go without saying that this bill is not the only way to address that issue, and it is certainly not the best one.

The bottom line is this: the provisions in this bill disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans and the expense of the poorest.  The bill gives almost a trillion dollars of tax cuts to the top 1% of American households.  Estimates are that people making more than $1 million will have an average tax cut of at least $80,000, or about $220 a day; people making $50,000 or less will get less than 68 cents a day from the tax cuts, about $248 total.  But by the time you eliminate ACA health care subsidies and expansion, food assistance, and more, more people will be worse off than better off.  It doesn’t have to be this way, as the Democratic Ranking Member on the House Committee on Ways and Means explained during debate, and it doesn’t have to be this bill.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 216-214, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting no.  It is now headed to President Trump’s desk for signature, and he is expected to sign it tomorrow.