Nobody should be surprised to find that the GOP tax plan will mightily screw over poor people.
Two weeks after its introduction and following zero hearings, the House of Representatives passed an approximately $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut on Thursday. Most of the focus has been on the bill’s tax benefits for the wealthy and corporations, but some lawmakers are sounding the alarm that passage of the bill will also trigger an estimated $25 billion cut to Medicare.
With the Senate expected to take up its own bill after the Thanksgiving recess, Democrats struggling to mount an opposition to the bill see an opening in its controversial health care impacts—including the Medicare cuts, the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate, and the elimination of the medical expenses deduction in the House bill.
The Medicare cut—announced by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday—can only be waived by a majority of the House and a 60-vote supermajority of the Senate.
Thanks to laws created by the Tea Party’s infamous 2010 sequester showdown over government spending, automatic cuts spring into action anytime Congress passes a bill that balloons the federal deficit, as the tax bill would. The approximately $136 billion in cuts spurred by the GOP tax bill would hit a number of government programs—including farm subsidies and the Border Patrol—but would cut most deeply into Medicare. Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps are protected.