June 29 (UPI) — The Senate has started formal debate on the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill after lawmakers spent 16 hours reading the entire measure aloud on the Senate floor.
This Senate’s version of the budget measure would make deeper cuts to social service programs and lead to fewer people having insurance than previous versions, the Congressional Budget Office has reported.
According to the Congressional Budget office report, nearly 12 million Americans would lose coverage by 2034. Federal spending on Medicaid, SNAP and marketplace insurance benefits would drop by $1.1 trillion. AT least $1 trillion would come from Medicaid alone.
With its changes, he Senate version of the bill would add nearly $3.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, the CBO report said, while the House version would add $2.4 to the debt. These estimates are based on including the costs of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Republicans in the House and Senate have asked CBO, as well as the Joint Committee on Taxation, to score the bill using a method called “current policy baseline,” which would not include the the cost of extending the cuts.
When the cost of extending the tax cuts is excluded from estimates, both the House and Senate versions of the bill have been estimated to add between $400 billion and $600 billion to the debt over the next decade, according to the New York Times and Politico.
Medicaid cuts have been at the center of a high profile debate as social service agencies and rural hospitals have planned for spending reductions that could come at the expense of the nation’s hungry children and force some hospitals, especially in rural areas, to reduce services or close their doors.
The Senate voted Saturday to open debate on the bill and began a full reading of the measure on the floor.
The Trump administration has said it is reducing waste and fraud in social service programs, and that some of those responsibilities would be shifted to the states.
President Donald Trump has said he wants the budget bill passed by July 4th.
The cuts being considered to Medicaid would be the largest since it was launched in 1965.
