1 month ago
36
Senate Republicans accidental they’re going to rewrite the 1,116-page measure the House narrowly passed Thursday to enact President Trump’s agenda.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) urged GOP senators astatine a gathering Tuesday to support their changes to the measure arsenic minimal arsenic imaginable to debar wrecking the delicate compromises helium cobbled unneurotic successful the House to muster 215 votes for the legislation.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), however, told reporters that the Senate volition person its “imprint” connected the bill, and his GOP colleagues are looking to marque changes to an array of provisions.
Here are immoderate of the changes they are eyeing.
Deficit reduction
Senate conservatives led by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) privation to see bigger spending cuts successful the bill, arguing to colleagues that the legislation, arsenic drafted successful the House, volition bash small to rein successful spending.
Ron Johnson isn’t laying retired circumstantial cuts but calling for a instrumentality to prepandemic levels of national spending adjusted for ostentation and colonisation growth.
“My superior absorption present is spending. This is wholly unacceptable. Current projections are $2.2 trillion per twelvemonth deficit,” helium said. “There should beryllium a extremity of this Republican Senate to trim the deficit, not summation it. We’re expanding it.”
While House Republicans backed distant from making changes to the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage for Medicaid, Johnson and different Senate fund hawks privation to code it.
Scott, a adjacent state of Trump, is calling for a implicit repeal of the renewable vigor incentives created nether then-President Biden successful the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We should wholly destruct the Green New Deal,” helium said.
Lee is looking astatine national benefits going to immigrants lacking imperishable ineligible status, which helium said person not been wholly zeroed retired successful the House bill.
Medicaid
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) are threatening to reason Medicaid reforms that would chopped benefits, and they are taking a adjacent look astatine limits successful the measure connected states’ quality to usage wellness attraction supplier taxes to cod much national Medicaid funding.
Their main interest is that reductions successful national Medicaid backing to states would enactment unit connected agrarian hospitals and could unit immoderate of them to close.
“We’re inactive trying to fig retired what the supplier taxation reforms are, but I’m precise disquieted astir our agrarian hospitals successful Maine,” Collins told The Hill Wednesday.
Another country of interest is connection successful the House measure requiring radical earning betwixt 100 percent and 138 percent of the national poorness level to wage up to $35 per aesculapian service.
Hawley says that would mean “beneficiaries wage more.”
“These are moving radical successful peculiar who are going to person to wage more,” helium said.
But different Republicans privation to grow the Medicaid reforms to further trim the program’s costs implicit the adjacent decade.
Some senators privation to further restrict the availability to Medicaid sum to able-bodied adults.
“Medicaid ought to spell backmost and bash what it was acceptable up to do. It was acceptable up to instrumentality attraction of mediocre children and the chronically ill, and that’s what the absorption should be,” Scott said, noting that Florida didn’t grow Medicaid sum nether the Affordable Care Act.
Green vigor incentives
Senate Republicans whitethorn privation to loosen the pugnacious stance the House measure takes connected climate-friendly taxation credits.
In 2022, the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars successful taxation credits that supercharged concern successful low-carbon vigor technologies including upwind and solar.
The House mentation of the measure enactment pugnacious caller restrictions connected immoderate of those credits — particularly present that for galore types of vigor they lone use to projects that break crushed wrong 60 days of the bill’s enactment.
Prior to the text’s release, Sens. John Curtis (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Murkowski and Moran issued a missive calling for a “targeted, pragmatic approach” and informing against a “full-scale” repeal.
Tillis told The Hill this past week that changes would request to beryllium made to assistance companies that person already invested successful the credits.
“If millions oregon billions of dollars person been deployed, we’ve got to springiness those businesses immoderate off-ramp,” helium said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) besides called for immoderate changes past week, peculiarly to assistance emerging exertion similar geothermal energy.
State and section taxation deductions
Speaker Johnson and House Republicans hailing from high-tax bluish states held aggravated talks successful caller weeks to nail down a woody connected the authorities and section taxation (SALT) deduction headdress that helped the enclosure wide the measure earlier Memorial Day.
Much to their chagrin, it’s imaginable that could each beryllium for nought.
Senate Republicans are widely expected to propulsion their value around implicit however to grip the SALT deduction cap, which Johnson and House SALT Caucus members acceptable astatine $40,000 for those making $500,000 oregon little — up from the $10,000 headdress that was acceptable by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Complicating things for SALT members successful the House is determination is nary akin dynamic crossed the Capitol. There isn’t a azygous Senate Republican from immoderate high-tax bluish state, leaving galore members wanting to chop down what they presumption arsenic a generous $40,000 fig to thing much manageable.
“It’s not a Senate issue,” Thune told The Hill.
“I cognize the House had to marque a deal, but our members privation to beryllium heard connected it, and I presume we’ll person thing to say,” helium added.
The headdress is acceptable to expire astatine the extremity of the year, giving the half-dozen SALT members leverage arsenic they clasp the keys to last transition truthful agelong arsenic they ballot arsenic a bloc.
But Senate Republicans person made it known they expect to person their voices heard connected the subject, though they are cognizant of the Speaker's plight.
“The fig we attraction astir astir is 218,” said Cramer, a erstwhile House member. “Obviously, we’d beryllium unfastened to the Speaker’s desires, conscionable similar he’s been unfastened to ours.”
Sunsets
A apical precedence of Thune and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) volition beryllium to marque respective high-profile concern taxation breaks imperishable — oregon astatine slightest widen them implicit the adjacent decade.
The House measure restores 100-percent bonus depreciation for short-term investments from 2025 to 2029.
Similarly, it restores contiguous expensing for home probe and improvement and the EBITDA-based bounds connected concern involvement deductions from 2025 to 2029.
Thune connected Thursday flagged that arsenic an contented that Senate Republicans privation to change.
He said GOP senators are reviewing “the question of permanence,” noting the House measure has “shorter-term windows” connected the firm taxation provisions.
Crapo said the concern bonus-depreciation and expensing provisions “need to beryllium permanent.”
Spectrum auction
The House Republican measure would program for the merchantability of 600 megahertz of government-owned spectrum to assistance offset the outgo of taxation breaks, thing that has drawn beardown absorption from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a subordinate of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and different defence hawks.
“It has to beryllium taken retired oregon modified,” Rounds said of that House connection connected spectrum. “That to maine is of captious nationalist importance.”
He explained that House negotiators “extended the [spectrum] auction authorization until 2034” but lone protected the subject portions of the spectrum successful the archetypal auction sale.
“If they’re going to person auction authorization until 2034, the [Department of Defense] portions and the [intelligence community] portions person got to beryllium protected during the clip this auction authorization exists,” Rounds said.
