For weeks, President Trump has urged Congress to roll the vast majority of his legislative agenda into one “big, beautiful bill” — and on Tuesday, GOP Speaker Mike Johnson finally delivered when the House passed Trump’s sweeping budget blueprint on a party-line vote, 217 to 215.
“We promised to deliver President Trump’s full agenda, not just a part of it,” Johnson said. “We’re not just going to do a little bit now and return later for the rest. We have to do it now.”
Working the phones, the president reportedly flipped the last few holdouts himself. In the end, just one Republican — Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie — withheld his support.
Trump’s new budget blueprint, which is also known as a resolution, does three things.
First, it calls for extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, at a cost of $4 trillion over the next decade. It also makes room for another $500 billion in tax cuts Trump talked about on the campaign trail, such as no tax on tips, for a grand total of $4.5 trillion.
Second, the blueprint greenlights modest spending increases targeted toward immigration enforcement (up to $110 billion), customs and border protection (up to $90 billion) and military involvement in border security (up to $100 million) — top Trump priorities.
And finally, at the behest of conservative deficit hawks, the resolution mandates $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to partially offset new border spending and the trillions in revenue lost to Trump’s tax cuts. (Even then, the new budget would still directly add $2.8 trillion to the deficit.)
For now, Trump’s budget blueprint doesn’t say which programs will be slashed; instead, it instructs specific House committees to cut specific amounts from the programs under their jurisdiction.
But because Johnson & Co. are using a process called reconciliation, which allows spending bills to steer clear of a filibuster and pass the Senate on a simple-majority vote, the committees won’t have much wiggle room going forward.
Here’s where the biggest cuts are likely to come — and how they could affect you.
Energy and Commerce
Must cut at least $880 billion
The House Energy and Commerce Committee oversees a whopping $24.6 trillion in spending. Nearly $24 trillion of that money goes to Medicare and Medicaid — and the latter will almost certainly take the biggest hit.
“The instructions they have given necessitate huge cuts to health care — full stop,” Bobby Kogan, a senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress and a former Senate and White House budget official, recently told the New York Times. “There is a mathematical requirement.”
Medicaid is a partnership between the federal government and the states that provides health coverage to 72 million poor and disabled Americans. To find $880 billion in savings, Republicans have signaled that they may establish a national work requirement for Medicaid recipients who don’t have disabilities and don’t have young children, either. They may also reverse a Biden-era policy that limits how often states can check the eligibility of beneficiaries (which would increase the amount of paperwork required to stay enrolled). And they could limit the way states tax hospitals to help pay their share of Medicaid bills.
But according to the New York Times, those three changes — combined — wouldn’t get Energy and Commerce even halfway to $880 billion. To finish the job, the committee would likely have to scale back federal spending on working-class adults who were added to Medicaid when the program expanded under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
That could adversely affect as many as 21 million Medicaid beneficiaries in 41 states. Ten of those states have so-called trigger laws that automatically eliminate the expansion — and the Medicaid coverage it provides — if the federal government reduces its funding. Other states would be forced to find the money elsewhere (raising taxes, slashing education) in order to keep people insured.
Is it possible for Energy and Commerce to find savings elsewhere? Yes. But even reducing its non-health spending to $0 would leave the committee with $600 billion left to cut. Other options — overturning regulations that require carmakers to raise fuel efficiency standards and reduce emissions; auctioning portions of the airwaves to telecommunications companies; speeding up permitting for energy extraction — wouldn’t do much more.
Meanwhile, Trump has long insisted that Medicare is off-limits — while proposing budgets that would slash Medicaid. So despite the fact that the president said last week that Medicaid won’t be “touched,” either, it’s hard to see how he and his congressional allies “won’t have to” cut it.
Education and Workforce
Must cut at least $330 billion
The Education and Workforce Committee oversees $722 billion in spending, and nearly all of it involves child nutrition and student aid. Almost half of that money would have to disappear under Trump’s new budget blueprint.
That likely means big hits to school nutrition programs, school breakfasts and lunch programs for schools that serve low-income children. SAVE, a Biden-era student loan repayment plan, will probably end as well. And colleges may also have to pay in order to participate in student loan programs going forward.
Agriculture
Must cut at least $230 billion
The Agriculture Committee oversees $1.5 trillion in spending; the bulk of that money goes to food benefits (aka food stamps) through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). About 42 million Americans — including 1 in 5 children — rely on SNAP benefits to afford groceries each month, and reducing those benefits or restricting eligibility would directly impact their ability to put food on the table.
Additional savings
Must cut at least $562 billion
Tuesday’s resolution instructs four other committees to cut a combined $62 billion of their own spending. But along with the cuts listed above, that adds up to only $1.5 trillion. Seeking further deficit offsets, conservatives demanded an amendment that requires another $500 billion in savings, for a grand total of $2 trillion. Those additional cuts haven’t been assigned to any particular committees yet — meaning the final impact on Medicaid and other programs is likely to be even bigger than what’s spelled out above.
What’s next?
Before Trump’s budget actually goes into effect, the Senate has to adopt Tuesday’s blueprint — then both chambers of Congress must write and pass legislation that follows its instructions.
That’s likely to be an arduous process. When Senate Republicans passed their preferred budget blueprint last week, it included an extra $150 billion for military spending and an extra $175 billion for border security — but no tax or spending cuts. Trump has said he favors the House’s approach.
If Congress does eventually extend Trump’s 2017 tax law, Americans who make at least $5 million per year (representing 0.1% of taxpayers) would pocket an average cut of nearly $280,000, according to a recent analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center — or about 3% of their after-tax income.
On the other hand, middle-income households earning roughly $65,000 to $116,000 (21% of taxpayers) would receive a tax cut of about $1,000, or 1.3% of their income.
