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This is from Bobby Kogan, Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy for the Center for American Progress. Read his explainer in the budget reconciliation process at American Progress.
THIS IS VERY REAL and can be enacted even if all Ds vote no.
This is a tax bill, so it needs to begin in the House. The House or Senate or both need to go through the full committee process. The House almost certainly will, meaning each committee'll write legislation, & the members of each committee will need to vote on it.
This is the first place stop them.
Those Medicaid cuts? They come from the Energy & Commerce Committee. Here's a list of the members. If we can get a majority of these people to vote no, it's stuck there (unless the House gives up on the official committee process, forcing the Senate to do it)
Those SNAP cuts? They come from the Agriculture Committee. Same deal. We have to try to stop there here.
Those student loan cuts? They come from the Education and Workforce Committee. Same deal here as well.
If we lose there, and Republicans make it through all the reconciled committees, it goes to the Budget Committee. Same deal, try to stop it at the Budget Committee.
If we lose there, it'll go through the Rules Committee for a rule.
And if we lose there, it goes to the full floor for passage. When Republicans were trying to repeal the ACA in 2017, we initially stopped them here in March of 2017 before losing in May of 2017.
This is where the body as a whole will be voting on passage of a bill that would rip Medicaid away from many millions of people while taking food away from the hungry. They will console themselves because it could change. But we need to try to stop them here. If they can't pass it here, it's stuck.
If we lose there, it goes to the Senate. If the House skipped any of the steps, the Senate will have to go through the committee process as well - and it may choose to regardless.
For the Senate, SNAP is in the Ag Committee; student loans are in the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee; and Medicaid is in the Finance Committee.
If the Senate is *forced* to go through the full committee process (because the House didn't), then these are all places to stop them. In that case, if they can't make it out of committee, they're stuck.
Then they go to the floor. This is a privileged motion in the Senate with set debate (20 hours, split equally between Ds and Rs). This means there is no vote for cloture - which means it only takes 51 votes. Even if all Ds vote no, Rs can still do it if they stick together.
So, we need to try to peel off Republicans on the motion to proceed. We need four.
If we lose there, we go to vote-a-rama, followed by final passage. This is where we eventually won on ACA repeal. They couldn't get the votes for final passage in the Senate.
If we lose there, there's an extremely high likelihood that whatever passed the Senate will not be identical to what passed the House, so it'll have to go back to the House.
First, the House could just try to pass whatever the Senate passed.
The big drama between the House and the Senate has been that the House hardliners are worried the Senate bill won't cut Medicaid and SNAP enough. I explain in detail here.
But if the House just takes up the Senate bill and passes it, that's it. It's done. It goes to Trump for a signature. So we absolutely need to stop it there.
Some people will have voted yes the first time because they thought it might die in the Senate. Now it's real. Convince them.
Other people might be upset that the Senate version could be less evil than the House version. Sure, captain. Whatever you need. Not evil enough. Great reason to vote no. Whatever reason you want, I support.
If the House doesn't want to take up the Senate version for passage, it could amend it and send it back to the Senate. But they likely wouldn't do that. Instead, if they want to change it, they'll likely go to conference.
This is where both the House and the Senate send representatives to go work on a bill that they think each side can agree to. And in order to make it out of conference, you need a majority of House conferees to say yes and a majority of Senate conferees to say yes.
We won't know who the conferees will be until we get here. But at that point, this will be the place to stop them.
If they can make it out of conference, then it goes back to both the House AND the Senate to try to pass the conference report without any further amendments.
This will be the final place to stop them. One more vote in the House and the Senate where we try to save people's lives.
So, what can we do?
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.
Also, call your governor! Medicaid cuts would have an enormous effect on state budgets. The governors do not want to lose all that federal money. If your Republican governor talks to your Republican representatives, that matters!
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.
Read more from Kogan at https://www.americanprogress.org/people/bobby-kogan/
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