The "Big Beautiful Bill" Will Trigger Cuts to Medicare
The budget reconciliation bill just passed by the house is projected to trigger automatic cuts required by the PAYGO act of 2010, including a roughly half trillion dollar 10 year cut to Medicare.
Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" has narrowly passed the House. If it passes the Senate, Donald Trump is almost certain to gleefully sign it. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that it will trigger automatic budget cuts that include almost 500 billion dollars slashed from Medicare. The total predicted shortfall is 2.3 trillion dollars over 10 years.
Here's the press release from House Budget Committee Democrats:
CBO Confirms GOP Budget Bill Triggers Medicare Cuts
May 20, 2025
Press Release
Republican Plan Adds to the Deficit, Will Trigger Automatic Cuts Under Federal Law
WASHINGTON, DC — Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, released the following statement after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned that the Republican budget bill would trigger more than $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (‘PAYGO’) Act:
“This Republican budget bill is one of the most expensive—and dangerous—bills Congress has seen in decades. The nonpartisan CBO makes it clear: the deficit will explode so badly it will trigger automatic cuts, including over half a trillion dollars from Medicare.
This is what Republicans do—pay for massive tax breaks for billionaires by going after programs families rely on the most: Medicaid, food assistance, and now Medicare. It’s reckless, dishonest, and deeply harmful to the middle class.”
As Republican holdouts are demanding even more cuts to health care, there is no reason to believe the members of the current Republican conference will disarm this budget time bomb.
This bill is a fiscal train wreck. It puts more money in the pockets of the wealthy and corporations. However, because of the cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, the CBO estimates that it will reduce resources available to the bottom tenth of income earners by 4 percent. It's time to light up the phone lines of your senators.
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Notes:
Hopefully the Senate Democrats will use every tactic available to them to slow or stall this fiasco of a bill. The question is whether there are enough Republicans to block it completely or force meaningful amendments. We'll have to wait and see. Call our senators every day. And protest specifically about these budget cuts.
I wonder if the Senate Democrats will grow a set and pull the shit on Mitch McConnell he pulled on THEM when he was in the minority!