Senate Doubles Down on Budget Cruelty, Passing a Mega-Bill that will Harm Even More Americans.

The Senate, a body thought to be the moderating force in Congress, has instead taken a yolo approach to legislating, passing a version of President Trump’s budget bill that is even more draconian, more cruel and more damaging than the House-passed version. It will kick millions off their healthcare plans, implement deeper cuts to Medicaid, increase energy costs for all Americans, cement the worst of the DOGE cuts and increase the deficit by an even greater amount.

The bill mortgages our future and raises costs for everyone, taking from the most vulnerable to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And even with all the cuts, the bill still adds $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

But don’t worry, Republican Senators found money to build additional concentration camps detention centers, give billionaires tax cuts, and erect a $40 million National Garden of Heroes. All things that are all totally worth taking food from children to pay for!

The House will now consider the updated legislation.

With the President demanding a bill on his desk by July 4^th, it’s all hands on deck right now to stop this thing. Republicans are lying to you. They are lying about the extent of the cuts and the cost of the bill. They want to do this in 24 hours because the more people hear about the bill, they less they like it.

It’s up to us to tell our Representatives we know the truth, and we’re furious about it. Call your Representative, email them, stage a sit-in at their offices if you have the means — especially if you are in a swingy district. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but let’s fill that bucket up.

It’s also up to us to keep telling people about this bill and all the horrible things Republicans have done to their constituents and the county, even if it becomes law. Relentlessly.

The bill follows the flood the zone with s**t strategy Republicans have become so fond of. There is so much that is objectionable that it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve broken down the worst of the worst to a summary of talking points you can use when you contact your representative.

For a full summary of all cuts, see our analysis of the House bill here.

Table of Contents

How the Senate Mega-Bill Strips Healthcare from Millions and Increases Costs for Us All
Affordable Care Act Cuts: Making Healthcare More Expensive for Everyone
Medicaid Cuts: Work Requirements and Cost Barriers
SNAP Cuts: Making Food Less Affordable for the Most Vulnerable
Raising Energy Costs and Sacrificing the Environment
Increasing ICE Raids and Detentions

Healthcare: How the Senate Mega-Bill Strips Healthcare from Millions and Increases Costs for Us All

Early estimates are that between 17 and 20 million people will lose coverage due to Medicaid and ACA changes, and millions more will see premium costs skyrocket.  

While the Medicaid cuts in the budget have received considerable attention, some of the ACA cuts are flying under the radar.

The upshot: The Senate Budget increases red-tape and wasteful administrative costs while reducing access to tax credits and subsidies for millions of people. As people fall out of the marketplace, costs will rise for everyone. Additional burdens to implementation may cause insurers to leave the marketplace.  

To do this, the bill:

• Limits eligibility for premium tax credits and subsidies, giving millions of people fewer or no affordable options for purchasing insurance. Both the House and Senate bills decline to extend the enhanced ACA premium subsidies that have made marketplace plans more affordable. The CBPP estimates this will cause over four million people to lose coverage.
• Expands administrative oversight of premium subsidy eligibility. The party of eliminating waste and abuse is adding layers of bureaucracy and red tape by imposing burdensome verification requirements on consumers who must prove they are eligible to receive subsidies. This both increases the cost of running the program and will likely prevent eligible purchasers from receiving assistance.
• Makes enrollment more difficult by barring automatic reenrollment for people who are eligible for subsidies, shortening open enrollment periods and eliminating special low-income enrollment periods.
• Changes the technical methods by which premium increases are calculated and reduces tax credits, raising costs for everyone.
• Eliminates protections on the amount the federal government can claw back from people whose incomes change. The bill removes the cap on the amount enrollees must repay government if their income changes, which will result in some of the most vulnerable individuals facing steep tax bills that put their ability to afford coverage at risk.

Medicaid Cuts

If you were outraged over the proposed $800 million in cuts to Medicaid in the House budget, be ready to go full hair-on-fire over the $1 trillion in cuts the Senate bill will enact.

The upshot: Senators are attempting to hide Medicare cuts behind technical jargon, but the truth is the bill contains $1 trillion in cuts, adds costly administrative burdens, reduces states’ ability to secure money for Medicaid-based programs and providers, and forces 17 million people to lose coverage. It’s death by 1000 cuts.

The bill accomplishes this by:

• Taking away the additional federal Medicaid funding incentive for states expanding Medicaid under the ACA, making it more difficult for states to add or expand coverage
• Expanding wasteful red-tape and administrative oversight of eligibility. The bill increases required eligibility checks and prevents implementation of two rules that would have simplified and streamlined the enrollment and renewal process.
• Adding unnecessary and burdensome work requirements that in some cases make families choose between caring for young children or getting healthcare coverage. Studies of states that have implemented work requirements have shown that these requirements do not increase employment but do force people off Medicaid who are eligible for coverage.
• Reducing allowable Medicaid payments directed by states to providers, making it more difficult for hospitals and clinics to stay open.
• Requiring Medicaid Section 1115 demonstration projects to be strictly budget-neutral, which takes away states’ flexibility to expand Medicaid services or covered populations.
• Imposing a stricter “Medicaid provider tax” uniformity rule (Sec. 71119) to curtail states’ ability to raise local funds for Medicaid. (States rights!)
• Reducing Medicaid’s retroactive eligibility period. Currently, if someone qualifies, Medicaid can pay for medical bills incurred in the 3 months prior to application, if the person would have been eligible in those months. The bill cuts this to 1 month for ACA expansion enrollees and 2 months for most other Medicaid groups.
• Requireing co-payments and premiums (“cost-sharing”) that can be charged to patients at the time of service, increasing out-of-pocket costs and potentially causing delays in care or preventing patients from receiving care.

The fact is that most people who are on Medicaid already work or cannot work and qualify due to disability or the fact of caring for young children. Republicans are trying to use paperwork and bureaucracy to force people who are eligible to receive and who rely on Medicaid to just give up and lose coverage, thus saving money for billionaire tax cuts.

The effects of Medicaid cuts on Children

Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provide healthcare coverage and lifesaving care for 37 million children. That is almost half the children in America.

That includes:

• 15 million children with special needs
• 3 million children of veterans
• 40 percent of children in rural areas and small towns
• Medicaid also covers 41 percent of all births
• This bill is anti-family in its willful neglect of children and caregiver needs.

But don’t worry kids, the bill also reduces Medicare’s ability to negotiate for lower drug prices and exempts more drugs from negotiation eligibility, so they are going after people in every stage of life.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Reductions

Because it’s not enough just to kick kids and their caregivers off Medicaid, the bill also targets nutrition benefits and food assistance. This will affect roughly 40 million people, including 16 million children.

The upshot: The Senate bill reduces the amount of food assistance SNAP will cover, decreases the number of people who qualify, and makes it more likely for low-income children and adults to face hunger and illness.

The bill does this by:

• Modifying the way the USDA calculates the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which determines SNAP benefit levels. It undoes the recent increases in SNAP allotments that were helping people pay for rising food costs.
• Expanding work requirements by raising the age cutoff and adding new categories of adults who must work to receive food assistance. This will older adults and possibly parents of young children will have to meet work requirements.
• Increases the financial contribution that states must make for certain SNAP expenditures. This forces states to provide higher matching funds and shifts federal budget burdens onto state governments, which will likely force cuts in benefits.
• According to the CBPP, food benefits would be cut by an average of $100 per month for many low-income households, because we have money to give billionaires tax cuts but not $100 a month to feed kids.

Raising Energy Costs and Sacrificing the Environment

The changes to energy policy in the Senate bill have the combined effect of increasing costs for consumers while also sacrificing the environment, scientific innovation and U.S. global competitiveness. Experts project electricity prices could rise by as much as 19 percent.

The upshot: The Senate mega-bill raises energy costs for Americans, reduces grid stability, kills jobs and sacrifices the environment for the sake of winning a bonkers culture war against clean energy.

The bill is the legislative equivalent of Donald Trump’s grudge against Joe Biden, undoing key accomplishments at the cost of the American people by:

• Rolling back incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and accelerating the phase-out of subsidies and tax credits for clean power projects.
• Expediting the end of federal solar and wind tax credits. Investment and production solar credits are cut by 60 percent in 2026 and eliminated by 2028. Wind incentives are phased out after 2026 and eliminated by 2028.
• Shifting the tax-credit eligibility from a start-construction basis to a strict placed-in-service requirement. Currently, a project could qualify if it began construction before the sunset date. The Senate bill requires projects to be fully operational by end of 2027 to receive credits.
• Ending the residential solar tax credit
• Adding new tax incentives for coal production

These changes have major implications for projects that are already funded or underway. If a planned project cannot meet the expedited schedule for the expiration of incentives, it could be delayed or eliminated.

Since the beginning of 2025, an estimated $15.5 billion of investment in clean energy projects has been lost. More than half of the loss has occurred in Republican congressional districts.

On a very basic level, the cuts will increase costs by reducing the availability of less-expensive renewable energy. It will also make less energy available overall, stressing grids and forcing rate increases.

The cuts will also lead to job losses when projects and factories that have been planned and, in some cases, started are forced to shut down in the face of lost incentives and tax credits. This puts the U.S. in a less competitive position in clean energy innovation, which can have effects on our budgets and health for decades.

Republicans are willing to sacrifice jobs and increase costs to own the libs on the environment. It is an embarrassing use of power to punish current and future generations.

Increasing ICE Raids and Detentions

According to the non-partisan American Immigration Council, the Senate bill “marks the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history.”

The Upshot: The bill gives billions of dollars to ICE and funds new detention centers, increasing the ability of masked agents to kidnap people off the street on their way to work, but doing nothing to address the systemic problems with our immigration system.

This includes:

• Over $100 billion for immigration enforcement.
• $45 billion for new detention centers, which is a 265 percent increase and 62 percent more than the budget for the entire federal prison system (the Bureau of Prisons spends $8 billion a year.)
• $29.9 billion toward ICE kidnapping enforcement (a 30 percent increase)
• A cap on the number of immigration judges at 800. The bill adds detention capacity and enforcement abilities but reduces the system’s ability to handle the influx, essentially turning detention into indefinite imprisonment.
• $46.6 billion for the ineffective, failing border wall

Republicans have no interest in fixing a broken immigration system. This bill will just allow the government to round up more people, including legal residents and citizens, without providing a way for them to present their cases before immigration judges.

This bill takes down and tears apart. It takes from the most vulnerable and increases healthcare and energy costs for all Americans all to give tax cuts to the rich and terrorize communities. It is un-American and cruel, and Republicans must not be allowed to forget that fact.