Congress
CBO: 7.6 million would go uninsured under GOP Medicaid bill
The Medicaid portions of the GOP megabill would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the health safety net program and 7.6 million people going uninsured, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans released the partial estimates Tuesday less than a half hour before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to mark up its portion of the legislation central to enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border and energy.
The panel has been tasked with finding $880 billion in savings, and the CBO confirmed the committee is on track to meet that target. CBO also projects that many of the major Medicaid policies would account for $625 billion in savings, though the scorekeeping office didn’t calculate the impacts of all provisions.
Work requirements would produce the biggest savings in the bill, accounting for nearly $301 billion over a decade — deeper than what had been initially anticipated. Overturning Biden-era rules on the program would save nearly $163 billion, and a moratorium on new taxes that states levy on providers to help finance their programs would recoup roughly $87 billion.
Republicans have argued that the changes will streamline Medicaid and allow it to better focus on serving the most vulnerable beneficiaries.
Democrats have argued the changes will lead to devastating impacts on health care access and have made the case — including by pointing to previous CBO estimates — that work requirements would simply remove people from coverage rather than motivate beneficiaries to find jobs.
“Republicans are trying to say this is kind of a moderate bill,” Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone told reporters Monday. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Congress
House Republicans eye passage of Senate-backed DHS funding bill
House Republican leaders are working to approve a bill Thursday that would fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except its immigration enforcement agencies — potentially ending the department’s 76-day shutdown — according to a half-dozen people granted anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes talks.
Speaker Mike Johnson is discussing the idea with members of his conference who have wanted to hold off on passage of the bill until Republicans enact a separate party-line package to fund agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
The Senate passed the partial DHS funding measure in March, but for more than a month, House GOP leaders have bowed to the holdouts and resisted calls to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Now the White House and some House Republican lawmakers are pressuring Johnson to clear the bill before lawmakers leave town for a weeklong recess.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma and House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan were among the Republican lawmakers who confirmed that GOP leaders are attempting to send the bill on for Trump’s signature Thursday.
Johnson and Cole have both floated the idea of tweaking the bill to omit language explicitly stating that ICE and Border Patrol aren’t funded. But that would require sending it back to the Senate — not directly to Trump.
The speaker is still considering whether to alter the bill or put it on the floor without changes, the people familiar with the talks said. Either would involve using a fast-track process that requires support from two-thirds of lawmakers for passage.
Congress
Mike Johnson backs Louisiana election delay, urges other states to redraw maps
Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map Wednesday.
“The governor has no choice but to suspend it,” Johnson said. “The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.”
He spoke as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Louisiana could not carry out elections under the current map and would be working “to develop a path forward.” Any new map is likely to threaten the seats of Democratic Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, who are both Black.
The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the longstanding practice of requiring line-drawers to protect racial minorities’ voting power.
The exact timing of the rescheduled elections is “not my decision,” Johnson added, but said “the way it was typically done” was to hold an all-party “jungle” primary in November, with a runoff in December, and “it looks like it may be that way again.”
“But again, my fingerprints aren’t on it,” Johnson added. “It’s a decision of the state Legislature.”
He also encouraged other states with VRA-mandated minority districts to act quickly and potentially redraw their maps before November, even though many have their election processes well underway already.
“All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,” he said.
Congress
A top GOP super PAC warns ‘the Republican Senate majority is at risk’
Top Republicans are growing increasingly anxious that the Senate, once seen as a lock for the party to hold in the midterms, is at risk of flipping as Democrats continue to hammer President Donald Trump for the cost of living and foreign intervention in Iran.
That fear is laid out in a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, from the powerful GOP and Koch-aligned super PAC Americans for Prosperity Action, whose leaders are calling on the GOP to lock in on the cost of living or risk losing power in Washington.
“As it stands today, our view is that the Republican Senate majority is at risk,” AFP senior adviser Emily Seidel and Executive Director Nathan Nascimento write. “Our internal polling in several battleground states and one-on-one conversations with voters show that for the first time, Democrats are more trusted on the economy and inflation.”
Their warning comes with a clear plea for the GOP: Figure out how to message on cost living, and fast.
“The window to act is now,” they said.
In their view, there’s a clear path forward, but it requires a coherent message and “relentless focus on driving costs down and keeping them low.”
“Every policy fight, every floor speech, every campaign event should answer one question—what are you doing to lower the cost of living for working families?” they write.
The memo comes as polling shows Trump’s approval rating continue to slip on economic issues: A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week found just 22 percent of Americans approved of his handling of cost-of-living issues.
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