{"id":8942,"date":"2025-05-07T19:17:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/state-budgets-land-in-gop-crosshairs-amid-struggle-to-fund-megabill\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T19:17:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:17:48","slug":"state-budgets-land-in-gop-crosshairs-amid-struggle-to-fund-megabill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/state-budgets-land-in-gop-crosshairs-amid-struggle-to-fund-megabill\/","title":{"rendered":"State budgets land in GOP crosshairs amid struggle to fund megabill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Congressional Republicans agree that the federal government has a spending problem. Now top GOP leaders want to make it someone else\u2019s problem \u2014 by shifting some safety-net programs onto state budgets.<\/p>\n

The plans under discussion could generate hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to finance the GOP\u2019s domestic policy megabill. But they\u2019re vexing Republican lawmakers \u2014 many of them former governors and state legislators \u2014 who are not interested in addressing Washington\u2019s fiscal woes by creating them in state capitals, including those run by their own party.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one big reason why Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> and Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> are struggling right now to build consensus for the \u201cbig, beautiful bill,\u201d with its expensive suite of tax cuts as well as border and defense spending plus-ups. Already they are scaling back ambitious plans that would force states to either subsidize health and food aid or kick thousands of residents off benefit rolls.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us are not interested in simply shifting costs,\u201d said Sen. Mike Rounds<\/a> (R-S.D.), a former governor, who warned \u201cthere most certainly would\u201d be significant pushback from states if the GOP proceeds with cost-sharing plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope to goodness we don\u2019t go there,\u201d added Sen. Jim Justice<\/a> (R-W.Va.), another former governor, whose constituents are heavily reliant on federal programs.<\/p>\n

The mathematical impetus for the GOP proposals is straightforward enough: The tax cuts that President Donald Trump and Republican leaders are eyeing are estimated to cost $5 trillion or more over the coming decade. Offsetting that cost requires more than shaking the couch cushions, and two safety-net programs have emerged as particularly appealing targets.<\/p>\n

Together Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, account for about $1 trillion in yearly federal spending. Republicans are mostly unified on instituting work requirements, tightening eligibility verification, excluding undocumented immigrants from benefits and cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse. But to achieve even deeper cuts, they are looking to make states pick up more of the tab.<\/p>\n

Medicaid has been a joint federal-state program since its creation in the Great Society era, but its 2010 expansion under the Affordable Care Act put the federal government on the hook for 90 percent of the costs for newly eligible beneficiaries. States, meanwhile, have never had to bear the costs of SNAP benefits, though they are responsible for a portion of administrative costs.<\/p>\n

Under some House GOP proposals now under consideration, states would have to assume a greater share of the cost for the Medicaid expansion population while also bearing a portion of SNAP benefit costs for the first time. Republicans are also exploring whether to curtail health provider taxes states frequently use to finance their Medicaid costs.<\/p>\n

Together, it could shift hundreds of billions of dollars yearly to state budgets that are already strained as federal pandemic aid runs out and other Trump administration cuts take effect. In California, for instance, lawmakers are preparing for a minimum $10 billion budget shortfall<\/a> for the fiscal year starting July 1, with that number set to triple at least in 2026.<\/p>\n

The National Association of State Budget Officers has found that Medicaid makes up more than half of federal funding to states. Brian Sigritz, the group\u2019s director of state fiscal studies, said in an interview that states will either have to raise taxes, cut benefits or slash other programs in response to the slew of changes impacting their budgets. Sigritz said the impact will be \u201ccumulative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear states won\u2019t be able to absorb the federal cuts and cost shifts in recent federal actions and congressional proposals,\u201d Sigritz said. \u201cStates are required to balance their budget, and states won\u2019t be able to fill in the gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans have trained much of their criticism on Democratic-run states that, they argue, run those two programs wastefully. But millions of low-income families in red states also rely on the programs for health care and food aid, and some of the latest GOP plans would actually hurt deep-red states even more than others \u2014 including a reworked SNAP state-cost share plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That has fueled the intra-GOP backlash, with many Republicans in the House and Senate shorthanding their opposition by insisting they will not \u201ccut benefits\u201d \u2014 meaning they might tolerate work requirements and other ancillary changes but not changing the federal government\u2019s core responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Rep. David Valadao<\/a>, one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in 2026, is a former state legislator who sharply criticizes the fiscal management of his home state of California. But he\u2019s also wary of putting a greater financial burden on states like his.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia has kind of blown it on some of these fronts,\u201d Valadao said. \u201cSo it puts me as a Californian in a difficult position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Derrick Van Orden<\/a> (R-Wis.) stood up during a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning to warn about the SNAP proposal\u2019s impact on his home state of Wisconsin\u2019s budget. Alongside Van Orden sat dozens of House Republicans in states that would be hit even harder.<\/p>\n

GOP leaders have pulled back from some of the farthest-reaching proposals. The House Agriculture Committee had been eyeing having states pick up a 25 percent share of SNAP costs; the latest proposal would start at 10 percent<\/a> for states with the lowest rates of overpayments. \u201cNo one likes this,\u201d said one Republican granted anonymity to describe private sentiments inside the party, \u201cbut we need to reach these cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Medicaid, Johnson on Tuesday ruled out cutting the federal reimbursement rate and suggested that an alternative \u2014 per-capita caps on federal reimbursements \u2014 would also be excluded.<\/p>\n

But other proposals \u2014 like limiting state provider taxes \u2014 remain on the table, and so far the public pushback inside the House GOP has been relatively limited. That\u2019s not true in the Senate, where most Republicans hate the idea of saddling states with billions of dollars in new financial burdens \u2014 though discussion continued about cutting the federal share for some Medicaid beneficiaries at a party retreat Wednesday, according to two senators who attended and were granted anonymity to describe the closed-door event.<\/p>\n

Sen. Thom Tillis<\/a> (R-N.C.), a former state House speaker, has warned against catching states off guard on Medicaid changes and said he plans to call members of his own state legislature to discuss the percolating proposals. Sen. Kevin Cramer<\/a> (R-N.D.), another veteran of state government, said shifting costs to states \u201cmay make [the federal] numbers look better \u2026 but it still becomes a burden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman<\/a> (R-Ark.) said in an interview that he has \u201cconcern\u201d about sharing costs for food aid and that his panel is not pursuing the idea. Sen. John Hoeven<\/a> \u2014 who, like Boozman, is in frequent contact with House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson<\/a> (R-Pa.) \u2014 said he was skeptical the House would ultimately follow through: \u201cI\u2019d put that in the category of, let\u2019s actually see if they do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

New cost-sharing mandates could stick GOP-dominated states such as Alaska, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama and Florida with multi-billion-dollar annual bills \u2014 forcing high-stakes choices for state officials who would suddenly have to worry about their own political hides. Even White House officials have privately fretted about a potential \u201cone-two punch\u201d for red states, leaving many in the GOP much more comfortable with the less drastic proposals, such as work requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the politics of work are a lot lighter burden to carry than just pushing off some of the costs to the states,\u201d said Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> (R-Texas), who is seeking reelection next year.<\/p>\n

Samuel Benson, Rachel Bluth and Eric He contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congressional Republicans agree that the federal government has a spending problem. Now top GOP leaders want to make it someone else\u2019s problem \u2014 by shifting some safety-net programs onto state budgets. The plans under discussion could generate hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to finance the GOP\u2019s domestic policy megabill. But they\u2019re vexing Republican […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}