The hard-right lawmakers are insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and the Biden-era green energy tax breaks, among other changes, before they will give their support to President Donald Trump’s “beautiful” bill. They warn the tax cuts alone would pile onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt.
The failed vote, 16-21, stalls, for now, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to have the package approved next week. But the Budget Committee plans to reconvene Sunday to try again. Lawmakers vowed to negotiate into the weekend as Trump is returning to Washington from the Middle East.
“Something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.
It’s truly amazing that every time I read a headline that makes it sound like these people are doing something even remotely beneficial, additional context shows that they’re actually preparing for something even worse.
Seeing headlines before reading the articles, I thought “could they be growing a conscience?”
Silly, silly me.
They blocked it because it wasn’t hard enough, they want it to be worse.
Same as every funding bill for the last 8+ years. Far right sides with the Democrats, for opposing reasons. Then we either get a far right bill with freedom caucus support, or we get the bill pulled up the left for moderate democrat support.
“You meed to make things worse for people before we’ll vote for ir.”
So, they want to cut Medicaid, the US subsidy for healthcare for the poor, even harder then the mainstream of the party is willing to.
Democrats plot midterm comeback over GOP Medicaid cuts
https://apps.npr.org/2024-election-results/west-virginia.html?section=P
Trump won every county in West Virginia.
https://www.cookpolitical.com/vote-tracker/2024/electoral-college
He had the highest percentage share of the popular vote there in any state aside from Wyoming, the other big coal state, with a 41.9 percentage point lead over Harris in the popular vote.
And we already had one term of Trump:
https://qz.com/1960354/trumps-promise-to-put-coal-miners-back-to-work-was-a-failure
In 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a promise to coal miners at a rally in West Virginia. “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off,” he told them, wearing a white hard hat. “We’ll be winning, winning, winning.”
After four years of the Trump administration, coal has been losing, losing, losing. Not that Trump can take the blame (or the credit). Dismal economics have been inexorably displacing coal as the fuel of choice in the US and around the world. Trump made some attempts to stop the bleeding—easing air pollution laws and propping up ailing plants—and in 2017, falsely claimed those efforts were working. “We are putting the coal miners back to work, just as I promised,” he said.
https://wvmetronews.com/2025/05/01/medicaid-cuts-would-hit-wv-harder-than-most-states/
West Virginia is heavily dependent on Medicaid. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 28 percent of the state’s population—about 500,000 individuals—are covered by Medicaid. That’s the fifth highest per capita rate in the nation.
“Not only did you not get your promised coal boom, but he took your healthcare away to boot.”
EDIT: The Guardian visits McDowell County, West Virginia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqceHviNBC4
I’ve come here because it has a unique status in 2016: During the primaries, a higher percentage of people here voted for Donald Trump than anywhere else in America. It’s also the poorest county in one of the poorest states in the country.
I remember another video — don’t think it’s this one, since it’d have to be recent — with the (Democratic) county supervisor of the place saying in an interview that he’d voted for Trump in three elections now, that you never knew, maybe Trump would change things.
I never understand the constant pressure to the middle class and “poor.” Like how do you expect ANYTHING to get done if people have nothing?
I always go back to thinking about corporations and anyone who produces a “product” and think what consumer will spend the money they don’t have so some company and their board can have more money? If consumers have no money to spend, how will the rich continue to extract it from them? You can’t draw blood from a stone. They don’t even have to care about people, but if there’s literally nothing to take from them, then where is all the “wealth” coming from?
I think you’re just thinking too far ahead, they look at the quarterly bottom line and how to make it grow for the next quarter, no matter what.
how do you expect ANYTHING to get done if people have nothing?
Slavery. Or feadalistic serfdom.
Ideology does that.
We don’t want the nation to go into debt to pay for our team cuts. We want the poor to go into debt.
Exactly. Anyone “stunned” by this isn’t paying attention.
The real test will be if the Dems have the integrity to filibuster whatever sick shit ends up getting to the Senate.
Well basically they are saying it’s better for the poor to be sick and die, and to destroy the environment, than for the rich to pay their fair taxes, although they are already lower than for average people.
“The tax cuts alone would pile on the nation’s $36 trillion debt”
…So we will destroy beneficial programs and do the tax cuts anyway.It reads as:
“I stabbed myself in the stomach with a huge knife, but I realize that was not quite a good thing to do so I will shoot off my own knees to make it hurt somewhere else”.Right because if there’s one thing the rich need it’s more money. I hate fucking capitalism, I hate our government, and at this point I’m just tired of being alive.
Whenever there’s something that might actually do some good, they’re like “we just don’t have time, maybe in six months” but they’ll work over the weekend to fuck people over
Fuck people over WHILE enriching themselves.
