Congress

The ‘Medicaid moderates’ are the senators to watch on the megabill

Published

1 year ago

June 2, 2025

The Senate’s deficit hawks might be raising the loudest hue and cry over the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” But another group of Republicans is poised to have a bigger impact on the final legislative product.

Call them the “Medicaid moderates.”

They’re actually an ideologically diverse bunch — ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine. Yet they have found rare alignment over concerns about what the House-passed version of the GOP domestic-policy megabill does to the national safety-net health program, and they have the leverage to force significant changes in the Senate.

“I would hope that we would elect not to do anything that would endanger Medicaid benefits as a conference,” Hawley said in an interview. “I’ve made that clear to my leadership. I think others share that perspective.”

Besides Hawley and Collins, other GOP senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jim Justice of West Virginia have also drawn public red lines over health care — and they have some rhetorical backing from President Donald Trump, who has urged congressional Republicans to spare the program as much as possible.

Based on early estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 10.3 million people would lose coverage under Medicaid if the House-passed bill were to become law — many, if not most, in red states. That could spell trouble for Majority Leader John Thune’s whip count: He can only lose three GOP senators on the expected party-line vote and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.

Republicans already have one all-but-guaranteed opponent in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky so long as they stick to their plan to raise the debt limit as part of the bill. They also view Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as increasingly likely to oppose the package after spending weeks blasting the bill on fiscal grounds.

Meeting either senator’s demands could be enormously difficult given the tight fiscal parameters through which House leaders have to squeeze the bill to advance it in their own chamber. That in turn is empowering the senators elsewhere in the GOP conference to make changes — and the Medicaid group is emerging as the key bloc to watch because of its size and its overlapping, relatively workable demands.

Heeding those asks won’t be easy. Republicans are counting on savings from Medicaid changes to offset hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and rolling that back is likely to create political pain elsewhere for Thune & Co., who already want to cut more than the House to assuage a sizable group of spending hawks. At the same time, Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting the Senate make only minor changes to the bill so as to maintain the delicate balance in his own narrowly divided chamber.

Thune and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have already acknowledged that Medicaid, covering nearly 80 million low-income Americans, will be one of the biggest sticking points as they embark this month on a rewrite of the megabill. They are talking with key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations and being careful not to draw red lines publicly.

“We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs, without affecting beneficiaries,” Thune said, echoing language used by some of the concerned senators.

Crapo voiced support in an interview for one pillar of the House bill — broad new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries — but rushed to add that he’s “still working with a 53-member caucus to get answers” to how the program can be overhauled: “I can only speak for myself.”

Complicating their task is the fact that some in the group — namely Collins and Murkowski — have a proven history of bucking their party even amid intense public pressure. The pair, in fact, helped tank the GOP’s last party-line effort on health care, in 2017.

Leaders view them as unlikely to be moved by the type of arm-twisting Republicans are planning to deploy to bring enough of the fiscal hawks on board. And then there’s Hawley, who is playing up Trump’s own warnings to congressional Republicans about keeping their hands off Medicaid.

Hawley and Trump spoke shortly before the House passed its bill, with the senator recounting that the president said “absolutely categorically, ‘Do not touch Medicaid. No Medicaid benefit cuts, none.’”

Hawley, like Crapo, has indicated he is comfortable with work requirements, but he is pushing for two major tweaks to the House language: undoing a freeze on provider taxes, which most states use to help finance their share of Medicaid costs, and new co-payment requirements for some beneficiaries that he has been calling a “sick tax.”

The provider tax changes would present an issue with multiple senators, who fear it would exacerbate the bill’s impact on state budgets and slash funding that helps keep rural hospitals afloat. Justice, a former governor, called it a “real issue.”

“They haven’t done anything to really cut into the bone except that one thing,” Justice added. ”That’s gonna put a big burden on the states.”

Moran grabbed the attention of his colleagues when he warned in a pointed April floor speech that making changes to Medicaid would hurt rural hospitals. A “significant portion” of his focus, he said, “is to make sure the hospitals have the capability and the revenues necessary to provide the services the community needs — Medicaid is a component of that.”

Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, has also left the door open to supporting work requirements, depending on how they are crafted. She has also raised concerns about the provider tax provision, noting that “rural hospitals in my state and across the country are really teetering.”

Murkowski, meanwhile, isn’t as concerned about the provider tax, because Alaska is the only state that doesn’t use it to help cover its share of Medicaid spending. But she has expressed alarm over the House’s approach to work requirements, including a decision to speed up the implementation deadline to appease House hard-liners. She said it would be “very challenging if not impossible” for her state to implement.

As it is, any effort to water down the House’s Medicaid language will face steep resistance in other corners of the GOP-controlled Senate, where lawmakers are pushing to amp up spending cuts, not scale them back. Some senators, in fact, want to further tighten the House’s work requirements or reduce, not just freeze, the provider tax.

“I’d be damned disappointed if a Republican majority with a Republican president didn’t make some reforms,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “The provider tax is a money laundering machine. … If we don’t go after that, we’re not doing our jobs.”

Ron Johnson and a few others are continuing to push to change the cost split for those Medicaid beneficiaries made eligible under the Affordable Care Act. The federal government now picks up 90 percent of the cost, and House centrists nixed an effort by conservatives to reduce it.

One idea under discussion by conservatives is to phase in the change to appease skittish colleagues and state governments, but that is still likely to be a nonstarter for 50 GOP senators. Hawley warned that “there will be no Senate bill if that is on the table.”

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate passes funding bill to avert October shutdown

Published

17 seconds ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate passed a bill Saturday to fund the government beyond the midterm elections, putting the onus back on the House to head off a shutdown looming Oct. 1.

The Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 90-6 vote, with Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina voting present. The bill would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Senate leaders sped up consideration of the legislation as part of an agreement reached Saturday morning to allow members to leave for August recess.

The House and Senate have now each passed different bills aimed at averting a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. The House bill would fund the government through Dec. 4.

The Senate legislation sets up a year-end standoff over the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. The bill would block the administration from finalizing that rule during the length of the stopgap — and lawmakers are already expecting a December brawl over the issue.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week that he’s going to “fight like hell” in December to ensure Congress doesn’t further obstruct the grant overhaul.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resistant to the White House approach to grants. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will “continue to oppose” the Trump administration plans “because I think they politicize the grants process, and I don’t want that to occur.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Appropriations, said she too would “welcome the fight.”

The Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) intended to ensure that a ban on intoxicating hemp products kicks in come November, after Senate leaders at the White House’s urging included language in the funding bill to delay it.

The Senate bill includes language Democrats sought to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol don’t get any new funding under the patch. Republicans enacted $70 billion for those agencies along party lines earlier this year.

That prohibition could be contentious in the House.

Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said in an interview that the provision “could be a dealbreaker” and that he’s “not a fan” of the Senate version. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said Tuesday that he would say he’s undecided if GOP leadership whipped his vote on the Senate stopgap.

“I do not like the Senate language,” Van Drew said, noting the grant approval provision. “It’s one I would want to know what the president thinks.”

The White House issued a statement of administration policy in support of the Senate’s funding bill. No such memo was issued for the House bill, which did not include the funding increases and authorizations the White House requested.

“Every Member of Congress should support passage of this [continuing resolution] to keep the Government open as discussions on full year appropriations continue,” it reads.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, praised the Senate measure for including the grant and immigration enforcement language.

“This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution, but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills,” she said in a statement.

Mia McCarthy and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate eyes the exit after GOP-Trump deal

Published

4 hours ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.

The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.

The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.

Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.

The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.

Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.

During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.

“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.

Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”

Congress

Senate confirms 74 Trump nominees

Published

14 hours ago

August 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans confirmed dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees Friday, just before they leave for a five-week congressional recess.

Senators voted 51-47 to approve officials at the Departments of Defense, Energy, State and other agencies.

They included David Cummins to head the Transportation Security Administration, Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Hal Duncan to be OMB deputy director and Francis Brooke to be Treasury deputy secretary. Among the group were several ambassadors, including former Rep. David Brat to be ambassador to Australia.

Senate Republicans changed the chamber’s rules last year to be able to confirm lower-level nominees as a package instead of having to hold a vote on each.

After finishing the expedited procedure Friday, Senate Republicans estimate they will only have a small number of civilian nominees awaiting confirmation.