The Senate Parliamentarian has advised that a Medicaid provider tax overseeing is central to President Donald Trump’s tax reduction and the expenditure account that does not comply with the procedural rules of the Chamber, so that a crucial blow is delivered while Republicans are hurrying to complete the package this week.
Supervision of parliamentarians are rarely ignored and Republican leaders are now forced to consider difficult options. Republicans counted on large cuts on Medicaid and other programs to compensate for trillions of dollars in Trump tax benefits, their top priority. Moreover, the most important arbitrator of the Senate of her often complicated rules had advised against various GOP provisions that harden certain immigrants from health care programs.
Republicans crawled on Thursday to respond, with some who call for challenge or dismiss, the non -party -bound parliamentarian, who has been working since 2012. Democrats said the decisions would destroy Gop plans.
“We have disaster plans,” said majority leader John Thune of South Dakota.
He did not say whether the voices were on track, but he insisted that “we plow forward.”
But Senator Ron Wyden, the top democrat in the Senate Financing Committee, said that the Republican proposals would have meant $ 250 billion less for the Healthcare Program, “Massal Medicaid cuts that harm children, seniors, Americans with disabilities and working families.”
Trump wants action in the account
The result is a setback, because the Senate Republicans hoped to get votes towards the end of the week to get Trump’s deadline of the fourth July before the passage. Van Trump is expected to organize an event later on Thursday in the White House East Room, accompanied by truck drivers, firefighters, tipped employees, livestock farmers and others whose administration says it will benefit from the bill if he encourages it to pass it, according to an official of the White House.
Gop -leaders already had trouble collecting support for Medicaid changes that some senators said they were going too far and would have left millions without cover. The non-party-related Bureau for Congress Budget said that more than 10.9 million more people would not have health care under the bill in the house; Senate republicans presented deeper cuts.
Republican leaders rely on the tax change of Medicaid Provider together with other restrictions in health care to save billions of dollars and to compensate for the costs of trillion dollars in tax cuts. Those tax benefits of Trump’s first term would end at the end of the year if the congress does not act, which means a tax increase for Americans.
Gop torn apart over medicaid cuts
Various GOP people said that reducing the tax change of the Medicaid provider in particular would harm national hospitals that depend on the money. Hospital organizations have warned that this can lead to hospital closures.
Senator Josh Hawley, R-MO., Among those who fight the change, said he had spoken with Trump on Wednesday and that the president told him to return to an earlier proposal from the house.
“I think it only confirms that we were not yet ready for a vote,” said Senator Thom Tillis, RN.C., who had also expressed concern about the tax cuts of the provider.
States impose the taxes as a way to help finance Medicaid, largely by stimulating the reimbursements they receive from the federal government. Critics say that the system is a kind of ‘money laundering’, but almost every state except that Alaska uses it to offer health care coverage.
More than 80 million people in the United States use the Medicaid program, in addition to the Affordable Care Act of the Obama era. Republicans want to scaled medicaid back to what they say is the original mission, which mainly takes care of women and children, instead of a much larger group of people.
The bill with the house would freeze the taxes of the provider at the current level. The Senate’s proposal goes deeper by reducing the tax that some states can impose.
Difficult choices for the bow
Senate Gop leaders can strip or revise the provisions that are contrary to the rules of the Chamber. But if they go further, those measures can be challenged in a floor voice, which requires a threshold of 60 votes to overcome objections. That would be a long order in a senate divided 53-47 and united with Democrats against Trump’s bill.
“It’s pretty frustrating,” said Senator Rick Scott, R-Fla., Who wants even steeper reductions.
But Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., stopped calling against the parliamentarian. “I don’t intend to ignore her,” he said.
To cover lost income for hospitals, a plan that Republicans had considered had created a national hospital fund by $ 15 billion as a backup. Some Gop Senators said that was too much; Others, including Susan Collins from Maine, wanted at least $ 100 billion.
Since the end of last week, the parliamentarian worked the clock to assess the legislation before votes that were already expected on Friday.
On Wednesday at night, the parliamentarian advised GOP payment plans for student loans and Thursday advised the provisions that would have blocked access for immigrants who are not citizens to medicare, Medicare and other health care programs, including one that would have reduced money to states that some migrants allowed in Medicaid.
Earlier, proposals for cutting food vouchers were ruled in violation of the senate rules, as well as a plan to close the agency for financial protection of consumers.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freing, Leah Askarinam, Joey Cappelletti and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
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