Conservatives have blocked President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill. House Republicans failed Friday to push it out of the Budget Committee.

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.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    20·
    5 hours ago

    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.

    https://www.semafor.com/article/05/15/2025/democrats-plot-a-midterm-comeback-fueled-by-republicans-medicaid-cuts

    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.