Reconciliation

Reconciliation. It sounds nice, but this year it's a nightmare. As described in this Brookings article, budget reconciliation is a way for Congress to pass tax and spending bills with a simple majority. 

This explainer from the Congressional Progressive Caucus explains the budget process. 

Republican's Project 2025-related budget plans are bleak as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, including "deeply harmful cuts in programs and services for families and communities."

These cuts are not popular  and that provides some hope. Already, Republicans from swing districts are balking at draconian cuts to Medicaid. Worse cuts are on the table. 

Again, The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, "The House Republicans’ budget resolution calls for committees to enact $2 trillion in deeply harmful cuts through 2034 in programs and services for families and communities, including cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and student loans. The resolution also authorizes the Ways and Means Committee to increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion over the same time period — this is the “instruction” that allows the committee to craft legislation cutting taxes by this amount."

Their briefing papers explain that supports including rental and housing assistance; SNAP and other food aid; and Medicaid, child health programs, and rural hospitals help, added to expected price rises from tariffs and economic instability would slam most Americans in order to provide further tax cuts for the wealthiest.

House and Senate Republicans are moving forward with their competing bills and the debt ceiling is coming up in mid-March.

Now, Republicans have passed their budget resolution. This excellent thread by Bobby Kogan, Senior Director, Federal Budget Policy with the Center for American Progress, describes what comes next and what opportunities we have to stop it. 

"The single most important thing you can do, by a parsec, is show up at a town hall w/ your GOP member and talk to them face to face.

Heroes like @indivisible.org helped organize last time. People drove for hours to spend just a few minutes talking to their members. But we saved lives because of it.

The next most important thing you can do is call your GOP member's office every single day. When I worked in the Senate, in every single weekly all-staff meeting, we went over the phone calls we'd received.

Tell them you don't want any Medicaid cuts. Tell them you don't want any SNAP cuts. Tell them you don't want huge tax cuts for billionaires.

Tell them why it matters to you. *Make them* hear WHY Medicaid matters to you. That is how we convinced Murkowski, Collins, and McCain to vote no.

This will be a very hard fight, but it's worth it, because people matter.

We owe it to our family members who rely on Medicaid and SNAP. We owe it to our friends. We owe it to our neighbors. We owe it to the people we'll never meet."

Derrick Van Order voted for the Republican budget resolution. He emailed constituents: "Today's budget resolution did not include any cuts to specific programs. Anyone saying otherwise is lying ..."

These are weasel words. As the New York Times notes, while no program cuts are specified in the resolution, there are few paths to achieving the Committee on Energy and Commerce $880 billion reduction goal that don't include deep cuts to Medicaid. The alternatives the NYT offers include cutting Medicare instead, cutting everything else to $0 (which would still not be enough), or fudging the numbers.

The Center for American Progress lays out the potential cuts by Congressional district. More than 140,000 Van Orden constituents will be harmed by a $1.75 billion loss over nine years.

Our daily calls are still needed. La Crosse: (608) 782-2558 and DC: (202) 225-5506.