Title: The State of the Republicans' 'Big, Beautiful' Budget Bill

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Coming up later in the show, we're going to talk about your student loans because even before Trump and the Republican Congress got elected with their hostility to President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, the programs for many Americans with student loans were a mess in many ways. We're going to have The Cut from New York Magazine. We're going to have their financial advice columnist, Charlotte Cowles, who's going to answer your student loan questions. She's got a great column that answers a couple of the big ones, a number of the big ones. We'll take yours later in the program.

We'll also talk to our lead Eric Adams, reporter Elizabeth Kim today as we usually do on Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conferences. This week it was on Monday, but we're still going to break it down today. Liz asked him a great question about whether he's going to push for fast-tracking work permits for migrants with Trump in the White House and the suspicion that he's under Trump's thumb like he asked for those fast-track work permits under Biden. Remember he did that, so we're going to see how the mayor answered that question from Liz.

She's also on this Andrew Cuomo watch because people, including Congressman Ritchie Torres from the Bronx, have endorsed Cuomo for mayor even though he's not running as of now. That's all coming up today. We're also going to have a call in at the end of the show on how much success in your life has been motivated by proving your nemesis wrong. Who has a story like that? Apparently, Taylor Swift has a story like that, Michael Jordan has a story like that. We know Kendrick Lamar has a story like that. We'll see if you think any of the success in your life has been motivated by proving your nemesis wrong.

Here's where we start. A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you're talking real money. That's one way to look at the House resolution passed last night that could reshape the country for the next decade by the way it spends cuts and borrows money in its 10-year plan. One central question, is this a reverse Robin Hood budget, taking from the poor and working class and disabled to give to the rich? As the New York Times describes it, the budget resolution itself is silent on whether Congress cuts Medicaid, which provides health coverage to 72 million poor and disabled Americans.

It instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program to cut spending by $880 billion over the next decade. The Times goes on to point out that Medicaid and Medicare are the bulk of what that committee has jurisdiction over, so it would be hard for it to save $880 billion in other ways and that even that whole 880 billion is just one piece of the 4.5 trillion the budget allocates in tax cuts. On Morning Edition today, maybe you heard this Republican Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee argued they could cut that much fat from the Medicaid bureaucracy without affecting people's actual benefits. He used this story from the 1980s to make his case.

Congressman Tim Burchett: I can remember when President Reagan was in and there was a delivery service of-- it was for every dollar that was distributed, it cost $1 to $1.5 to get it to these people. He cut that middleman, so to speak out. That's a lot of what we're going to do. Of course, we're finding so much fraud, waste, and abuse in these groups.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee. As they say on Marketplace, let's do the numbers. With us now, Jacob Bogage, Congressional economics correspondent for The Washington Post, and Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Urban Institute as part of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. He conducts research and writes about federal tax and budget issues. Jacob and Joseph, thanks for some time this morning after maybe you were up all night with your magnifying glasses reading the numerical fine print. I don't know. Welcome to WNYC.

Jacob Bogage: Good to be here.

Joseph Rosenberg: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, let's start with a simple number that's not from the budget. Out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, this only passed by two votes. Why was it so close?

Jacob Bogage: Well, it really only passed by one vote. When you get down to it, if it was a tie, if one Republican flipped and it was a tie, the bill would fail, so why was this so close? First of all, the House Republican majority is operating on historically tight margins. Whether bills pass there really comes down to who shows up to work every day. It's really hard to pass a giant budget against unified Democratic opposition when you don't have the numbers most days. That's one.

Two, this was dicey for Republicans just on a policy front. You had a group of fiscal hardliners who said, "This doesn't give us the room to cut the budget enough. We want more. Give us more. We want more." Then you had some more moderate members, or at least more politically vulnerable members, who said, "Wait, if you cut this much, forget about more. If you cut this much, you're going to slice into social safety net programs that are political third rails for me and my district and my race."

Brian Lehrer: Even in Republican districts.

Jacob Bogage: Exactly. This budget bill got caught in between, and it took some last-minute hand-wringing and arm-twisting from President Trump, from Speaker Mike Johnson, and even a little bit of a head fake from Republican leadership, late night in the chamber, to try to get this across the finish line. They ultimately did, but, boy, was it tight.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you about that head fake because it's a dirty trick, from the way you described it, the way it reads to me in your article. Tell me if I have this right. Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pull this trick when he wasn't sure he would have enough Republican votes, what you call a head fake. What was that head fake?

Jacob Bogage: It's caught in the middle between did he convince these four holdouts that were going to sink this bill or was he trying to give them political cover? Based on our reporting, it's somewhere in the middle. There was a series of three votes, and this budget bill was supposed to be the second one the House voted on. It was clear that as Johnson and Trump were negotiating with these four members, Tim Burchett among them, that they weren't really making a lot of headway, so they said, "You know what? Let's punt. Let's postpone. We'll do this another time."

They skipped the vote, moved on to the next one. The House was about to adjourn for the night and Democrats were leaving the chamber, going home. They weren't going to come back. Mike Johnson turned around and said, "Aha, you know what? Let's vote on it anyway. Let's put--"

Brian Lehrer: While the Democrats are out of the chamber, some of their numbers, right?

Jacob Bogage: Yes, they're filing out. They said, Mike Johnson, the Speaker said, "Let's put this back on the floor. Let's vote on it. Maybe we'll have a numbers advantage this way."

Brian Lehrer: Is that what their values and ethics really allow? They would, if I'm understanding this correctly, reshape the tax code and healthcare and energy and environment and immigration policy, all those big things are in there, by tricking the Democrats into thinking there was no vote so they could slink it through while some people were out of the room?

Jacob Bogage: I don't want to speak to their values, but, yes, that's exactly what happened.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Joseph Rosenberg, this number of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts we've been hearing, you wrote on the Tax Policy Center site that Trump's desired tax changes could actually total $11 trillion. These ginormous numbers might be making our listeners' heads explode or go numb because they're hard to understand the implications of. Where does that $11 trillion number come from, and what would it imply for everything else the government spends on or borrows?

Joseph Rosenberg: Yes. Hi, Brian. It's great to be here. No, that's a great question. Again, what the bill that passed last night, which is the first step in the process, allows for $4.5 trillion or up to $4.5 trillion of tax cuts. The $11 trillion number is actually from a different group, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, that has tallied up not just the cost of extending the expiring tax cuts, which were originally enacted in 2017 during President Trump's first term in office, but also some of the other promises that either President Trump made during the campaign trail last year or subsequently, including offering tax exemptions for tipped income, for Social Security benefits, for overtime pay.

Now that they've just passed this first reconciliation, they actually have to do the hard part, which is trying to write the specifics around what tax policies they're going to pursue.

Brian Lehrer: Just sticking with a 4.5 trillion figure for tax cuts over the next 10 years, if less than 1 trillion, that 880 billion we were talking about, that might come from Medicaid, if less than 1 trillion is going to come from Medicaid, Medicare, Energy and Environment, as the blueprint seems to say, where will they get all the rest? Is it mostly increasing the national debt by borrowing?

Joseph Rosenberg: Certainly the reconciliation bill that passed last night involves an increase in the deficit and the level of debt. It allowed, again, up to $4.5 trillion of tax cuts, some additional spending on things like defense and border security, and then specify spending cuts in the $1.5 to $2 trillion range. When you do all the math, the reconciliation bill that was passed through last night would allow at least 2.3 trillion in deficit increases before you include the effects of additional interest that the government would have to pay on the national debt. It is certainly not a bill that reduces a deficit. In contrast, it makes things worse.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob Bogage, let me go back to you, and sorry for mispronouncing your name when I first introduced you. It is Jacob Bogage, I gather, Congressional economics correspondent for The Washington Post. Does anyone in your budget-wonk world believe what Congressman Burchett said in the clip from Morning Edition, that they could find $880 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse in the way Medicaid is administered without cutting people's actual medical coverage?

Jacob Bogage: No. No one believes that. God bless Tim Burchett, who is fun to talk to in the Congressional hallways, but he does not have a firm grasp of these numbers, and he'd be the first person to tell you that, so no, no one believes that. The other thing is, when we look at that $880 billion number, the Energy and Commerce Committee is actually expected to go above that number. They're expected to cut more. That's because this budget bill, as written, adds $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, and for this to be kosher under Senate reconciliation rules, it can't add anything to the debt over 10 years. Republicans are going to have to--

Brian Lehrer: In other words, for the Senate to be able to vote on it with just 51 Republican votes and not have to get to the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority, which they'll never get with the Democrats in the chamber, so in order to be able to pass it through both houses of Congress, it has to be debt-neutral. Is that what you're saying?

Jacob Bogage: It has to be debt-neutral or reduce the deficit. You can't have a deficit increase under reconciliation rules, which are very strict. The Energy and Commerce Committee is going to have to do more. When you just look at federal spending, if you're not going to touch Medicare, if you're not going to touch Social Security or Medicaid, that's like half of federal spending right there. President Trump has said don't touch the defense budget. Well, that's another solid chunk.

There is our annual debt interest payments, which we have to pay or we default, which would be really bad. You can't touch that. That leaves a very small pool of funding. It's not enough to satisfy hardline conservatives, so you have to go get something. Medicaid has emerged as this low-hanging fruit. Based on the instructions that have been given to these committees, you can't just look at administrative costs. You have to do something based on benefits or based on eligibility.

Brian Lehrer: Is there any indication yet what kinds of benefits or eligibility would be cut?

Jacob Bogage: We've heard a lot of talk about work requirements for Medicaid. That would require low-income folks to either be actively searching for a job, working, or volunteering. Normally Medicaid is checked once a year. Are you eligible? Tell us once a year. They could add more frequent checks, which would kick people off the rolls if they are found to be ineligible. Then there's certain types of coverage that the Biden administration and previous administrations have said should be included under Medicaid or under Medicare. The most recent was anti-obesity medication, things like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, these GLP1s or semaglutides.

Another one is homecare, which the Biden administration wanted to cover under Medicare, not Medicaid. These are the kinds of things you can nip and tuck around the edges and say, "No, no, no, everyone is still getting the same dollar amount in Medicare or Medicaid, but the quality of their care or the kind of care they're eligible for could decrease precipitously."

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Joseph, do you have anything on this one particular item that Jacob just mentioned that's been getting some news coverage that there might be more of a work requirement for people to get their Medicaid benefits? Why would that save the government money? I understand that's a social contract debate that the country has had over time, over various benefits. If you're going to get money from the taxpayer to support your life, you should be at least working to on behalf of the government, or whatever, not just sitting around. That sounds like a social contract debate, not something that would save the government money. Do you know why people say it would?

Joseph Rosenberg: Yes, sure. Before I get to work requirements, let me just read-- with 95% of what Jacob said, let me just clarify that the rules--

Jacob Bogage: Yes, set me straight.

Joseph Rosenberg: The rules of reconciliation are complex and may very well be tested over the next few months, but the reconciliation does allow for increases in the deficit at least within the first 10 years.

Jacob Bogage: There we go.

Joseph Rosenberg: Now, they would have to agree on that and that number. That is what at least the House did last night.

Brian Lehrer: That's huge because that'll be a big Democratic talking point and a big public concern by Americans of both parties and no party, which is we do have a really big national debt, and if it keeps getting bigger, it really will threaten Medicare and Social Security unless they do something with those programs to make them more sustainable, tax hikes for higher income people for Social Security or whatever, but that's huge if increasing the national debt substantially is part of this bill.

Joseph Rosenberg: Correct. I don't think there are too many observers that think currently that the fiscal position of the US federal government is on a long-term sustainable track, and this bill certainly goes in the opposite direction.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Listeners, some of you are calling in and texting. We'll open up the phones here in just a second. Jacob, politically, is there the rhetoric of the undeserving poor here, which is usually tinged with racism as well, poor people, who are disproportionately Black and Latino Americans, are getting over on everyone else by getting health insurance for free or food stamps, SNAP benefits for free, rather than seeing it as a structural problem with our economy that doesn't provide living wage opportunities for everyone? Is there rhetoric of the undeserving poor in here?

Jacob Bogage: To an extent, I don't know that it's the Ronald Reagan welfare queen-style rhetoric.

Brian Lehrer: That's what I have in mind.

Jacob Bogage: Let's zoom out a little bit. SNAP, which is the federal food stamp program, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, and then Medicare and Medicaid, those are administered by the states. There is a federalism argument to this. There is a argument that states know better than the federal government what individuals in their local communities need in terms of nutritional assistance, in terms of medical coverage, and medical care. You reverse that federalism argument when you say the federal government should impose work requirements or shout down to states that they ought to impose work requirements. Some of that starts to get into a little bit of the undeserving poor.

I think the best example of this, and we hear it very frequently from Republicans on the Hill, is about undocumented folks who are recipients of some of these benefits. First of all, there are legal questions about whether they can be or can't be, but that's also a values question for states. Have state and state officials and voters in those states, what's their understanding of who these programs ought to cover and what kind of goods and treatment and services they ought to include? You have this reverse federalism argument that does start to touch on the undeserving poor.

Brian Lehrer: People are talking about a rising oligarchy. We're hearing that word a lot, oligarchy, in the Trump and Musk co-president era or even without Musk in that role, that a central aim of Trump policy is to financially enrich his billionaire supporters and take from everyone else to do so, the reverse Robin Hood. What are Democrats or activists saying about that, and how do Republicans defend?

Jacob Bogage: It's been really interesting because I've been tracking the launch of some of these Democratic or liberal interest groups that have popped up to fight this tax bill. One of them is called Families Over Billionaires. Another one that literally launched on Tuesday was called Tax the Greedy Billionaires. They are directly leaning into this oligarchy argument. Now, how are Republicans responding to that? A, they're generally ignoring it. B, they're happy to jump on the Elon Musk bandwagon and ride the wave of public sentiment that they see in some of their districts about DOGE, but we are starting to see this tide turn a little bit.

Congressman Rich McCormick from Georgia held a well-publicized town hall where he got dragged over the coals by his constituents about the kind of actions Elon Musk was taking. Congressman Glenn Grothman in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, it's a deep red district, had a bit of a similar experience. Now Republicans are circulating talking points that say, "No more town halls. Don't do this anymore."

They are very chastened by the popularity or the unpopularity, I should say, of their 2017 tax cut. They thought it would be very popular. Instead, Democrats ran against it to great effect in 2019. There is some concern that if they don't pass this tax bill quickly, if they do it too close to the midterm elections and public opinion turns, that will be an albatross across their neck.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones now for any of your questions, comments, or stories pertaining to extending the tax cuts from Trump's first term, which would otherwise expire, or anything else in this House budget blueprint, implications for Medicaid or anything else. We'll get into other aspects too as we talk about this budget blueprint passed by just two votes last night or one vote, depending on how you read 217 to 215. If one vote flips, then it's a tie. Our guests are from The Washington Post and the Urban Institute Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Our phone number, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text, and we'll continue in a minute.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson: This is the first important step in opening up the reconciliation process. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us. We are going to deliver the America first agenda. We're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it, and this is the first step in that process.

Brian Lehrer: House Speaker Mike Johnson there last night, and we're talking about the House budget blueprint that did pass by just 2 votes out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives. With our guests, Jacob Bogage, Congressional economics correspondent for The Washington Post, and Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Urban Institute Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, and you at 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, call or text. Andrew in Ossining, you're on WNYC. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew: Good morning. If Republicans are serious about paying for their tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, then instead of gutting social safety net programs like Medicaid, and if they want the government run like a business, then why are Republicans also defunding the IRS, which if you think about it, is really the account receivable part of the government? Not to get too wonky, but finance is all about math, and these are choices. The question becomes who benefits? Especially by cutting the IRS and the agents involved there, you're really allowing more tax cheats and wealthy people to avoid paying taxes through intricate loopholes and complex accounting maneuvers. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Jacob, you want to take that on? What are the economics, and Joseph, I'll ask if you have anything on this too, of firing so many people from the IRS, which obviously collects the tax revenue that helps pay for programs and keep the debt as low as it can be?

Jacob Bogage: It's going to cost us a lot of money. Like the caller mentioned, if you are cutting into your accounts receivable, you are going to bring in less. The way the IRS used to operate its audits, and to an extent it still does but far less so, was to prioritize audits on low-income and working-class folks. Why? Because they have relatively simple tax returns, but they qualify for very complex benefits, things like the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit. Those are intricate processes, and a lot of people just don't understand how to fill out the forms.

It's very easy to audit them. You can automate those audits. You don't really need a human involved a lot of the time. You can do them all by mail. We know 40% of people who get EITC audits don't even receive the notices because they are not at the same physical mailing location from where they filed their tax return, so it's very easy to claim money back there. The IRS has started to move away from that by changing its audit algorithms, by hiring more officials to run collections and training that attention on wealthy individuals and corporations, but that's the direction the IRS will turn back to in the absence of funding to maintain those more difficult audits and examinations.

Brian Lehrer: Joseph, you have an article, who benefits and who loses from extending the Trump tax cuts law from his first term in the way they want to do? The caller asked, who benefits, who loses? I see the charts in the article do break out different income groups as specifically as for the top 1% and the top 1/10th of 1%. Can you put a number on how well billionaires make out by extending the Trump law compared to anyone else?

Joseph Rosenberg: That's a great question. I'll say, Jacob, describe the politics around the original 2017 Act and accurately. Extending the 2017 tax cuts, just like enacting them back originally predominantly or delivers much more benefits to higher-income households than it does to lower-income households. Largely that's by design that, especially back in 2017, the priorities were tax cuts for corporations but also significant cuts to the income tax, federal income tax, which is a very progressive tax.

For example, what our analysis shows is that for households, say in the middle of the income distribution, they might see a benefit of about $1,000 a year or about 1% of their disposable income, whereas folks at the very top, those in, say, the top 1% or even the top 1/10th of 1%, see something closer to 4% of their income or, say, for folks in the top 1%, that's about $80,000 a year worth of tax cuts. It is certainly the case that extending the tax cuts as written, deliver larger benefits to higher-income households.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, this is where the politics get weird and self-defeating, I think, for a lot of people because based on the two of you's last two answers, the Trump tax cuts from his first term did give tax cuts to many, many Americans, not just the rich. People say, "Hey, I got a couple of hundred dollars extra in my pocket from this tax cut." In the meantime, so much more money, as Joe was just describing, goes to people who are really rich taking money out of the federal revenue stream for services. Yet, people feel good about it, even though it may not be in their interest in the long run, certainly not proportionately by this argument, because they got a few hundred dollars and then maybe they got, say,$1,000.

Same thing with what you were just saying about the IRS, I think. People of regular incomes might be saying to themselves in any year, "Oh, taxes. Oh, the IRS. Oh, cut the IRS," but what actually happens? It's the very wealthy who can engage in sophisticated loophole designing, who get away with stuff, and it ultimately takes money out of the federal revenue stream that would more benefit ordinary Americans. Am I getting this right?

Jacob Bogage: I think so. There is a regressive element to this. We think about the horizontal equity of our tax system. If you have taxpayers who are in the same situation in life, they should pay the same in tax. Then we think about the progressive nature of our tax system, which is based on ability to pay. If you have more ability to pay, you contribute more, and that rises proportionally. There is a regressive element to parts of, not all of, but parts of the 2017 tax cut, which is you get a larger reward as you make more. Everybody gets a reward, but you get a larger reward proportional to your income as you make more.

Then there's the horizontal equity portion of this, the standard deduction doubled, which was great for folks on the lower end of the income distribution but didn't do as much for folks on the higher end of the income distribution because they capped other certain credits and deductions. This bill in 2017, to balance its price because it was very expensive, tried to seesaw its way to some equilibrium, and it didn't really accomplish that.

Brian Lehrer: Sam in Englewood, you're on WNYC. I want to say before we take Sam's call, that we're getting a number of calls and texts with people who have stories somewhat along these lines. Sam is going to represent a group that I think is important to be represented in this conversation. Sam, thank you for calling in.

Sam: Hi. Thanks very much for having me. I work. I volunteer and do advocacy for an organization called VOR, which stands for Voice of Reason. It used to stand for Voice of the Retarded. That word can't be used anymore, but that word connotes what it is we do and who it is we advocate for. I'm speaking for myself now. I just wanted to try to bring the conversation into reality a little bit away from wonkiness, not that wonkiness isn't important. The order of magnitude of the Medicaid cuts that the House passed bill represents, it's very clear to everyone who knows this area and everyone I know who has morality and sensibility, they're all opposed to fraud, waste, and abuse. That's not at all what this is about.

This order of magnitude of cut will cut care and services for the poor and for the near poor. Among those poor and near poor are the most vulnerable people in the United States who are people with profound and severe intellectual disabilities and severe autism. That's why I'm not using the R word now. We know this will affect them greatly. Whether they live in communities or in their own homes or in their families homes or in facilities, it's going to affect them because of the severity of their conditions. They use a significant portion of Medicaid monies. They have to because of their conditions, just as you have to if you were in an intensive care bed in a hospital.

Already these people are in crisis because the direct support professionals upon whom they depend to stay alive and for their daily needs, there's already a crisis there. The crisis was worsened by COVID. Any state that now has less Medicaid money to spend has to take money away from these groups because they spend a disproportionate share of the monies. If they held our people harmless, they would have to then do even deeper cuts of people-

Brian Lehrer: Everybody else.

Sam: -who don't have such great Medicaid needs. This is what we're really talking about is what will happen to vulnerable people who haven't done anything to deserve their vulnerability? Most of them were born that way. This is what we're really talking about when we talk about this size Medicaid cut. I just wanted to bring the conversation into reality. This is what's being decided upon, and this is what will happen. These people will die sooner, and they will suffer before they die.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, thank you very much for that call. Yes, as I said, we're getting a number of stories, not necessarily about that exact same population but about various kinds of people who have complex and expensive medical needs. They or people who are writing on their behalf are very afraid that some of those needs will not be met in the ways that they are now if the Republicans go through with what looks to be likely large Medicaid cuts. I'll read you a couple more of these. One listener writes in a text, "I am on Medicaid. One of the reasons is because my mother has Alzheimer's and is on Medicare and so gets zero support. I also have a pre-cancer condition that requires bi-yearly tests."

That's one family story. Another one is on the undeserving poor point. It's worth noting that a majority, and I don't know if it's a majority, but certainly, it's a lot of money, from Medicaid goes to long-term care nursing homes. Obviously, the people in long-term care nursing homes are people with expensive and complicated needs. Just with those texts and Sam's call to put, hopefully, more of a human face on it, on what we're talking about, not just numbers and broad swaths of populations as groups. Bonnie in Suffolk County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bonnie.

Bonnie: Hi, Brian. I'm a constituent of Nick LaLota, and I found it very interesting. I got an email from him last night to all the constituents after this vote, hedging on why he voted on it. This isn't the final bill. I promise to my constituents that I care about the SALT deduction. I promise I'm not going to take your Medicaid away. I would never vote for that. I voted for fraud in Medicaid. I would never hurt my constituents that way. It showed me that I feel like maybe the Republicans in Congress know how unpopular this is if they're covering their, you know what, so soon after the vote.

I did find it interesting he did ask constituents to sign up for town halls. I'll be very interested to see if those town halls actually happen because as one of your guests said, I don't think that they're going to happen. I think because the Republicans will probably cancel them. I just thought that was interesting to share. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for sharing it. Republican Congressman Nick LaLota on the Eastern end of Long Island, Lee Zeldin's former district, Zeldin, now the head of EPA. Jacob, since you cover Congressional economics, a communication like that from a Republican congressman to his constituents does put him in a particular position. A lot of Republican members would have this. He's promising that Medicaid benefits will not be cut, but you're both telling us that there's no way that they can cut the $880 billion that's projected just through waste and fraud. There are going to have to be program cuts, and it puts them on the spot, and he's voluntarily putting himself on the spot. Where do you think the chickens come home to roost in two years when everybody's up for reelection?

Jacob Bogage: I put this question to Nick LaLota directly myself the other day and said this bill, the math doesn't add up for you. You want an increase to the SALT cap, that is, you beat the drum on that every day, that's your issue. You are a Medicaid district, disproportionately Medicaid population in Nick LaLota's district. What do you make of this? He said, "This is an easy vote for me. I can take this vote to move this process forward. Then I'll look at the underlying bill about whether this addresses the SALT cap and whether this cuts into Medicaid. I'm happy to vote against that if I need to."

Because this House majority for Republicans is so incredibly slim, every man can be a king here. Every member with their specific issue set can hold this final bill hostage. Even though this budget passed yesterday, we are still a very, very long way away from a final tax bill that implements any of these policies. That's got to go through the Senate, where the rules are very arcane, so arcane that Joe had to correct me because I got one wrong.

The House, with this very slim majority, with this very diverse constituency of issues in the Republican conference, and I can tell you that Democrats are very bullish about their opportunities to take back the House in 2026, should caveat that they were very bullish on their chances of winning the House in 2024, and they did not do that.

Brian Lehrer: Since the caller brought up the so-called SALT tax deduction, and I know a lot of listeners in our area are interested in it because it very much affects people in New York and New Jersey, this is the $10,000 limit on how much in state and local taxes you can deduct from your federal income tax bill. This very much affects, for example, seniors who are on limited incomes and a lot of the life savings that they have are in their homes, but the property values go up, so their property taxes go up even though their income is limited.

A lot of people see this as having been placed into law by Trump as part of his revenge tour against blue states in his first term because it affects blue states who tend to have higher local taxes and higher property value. My question is, Jacob, did the SALT tax cap get addressed in this budget blueprint after Nick LaLota and a lot of other Republicans promised they would do something about it?

Jacob Bogage: I'm glad to use the term blueprint because that's what this is. It is a blueprint. There's no actual policy in this bill. There's just numbers that each committee has to hit, and those policies shape if they can hit those numbers or not. When we look at those numbers, no, it's very clear the SALT cap did not get addressed in this bill. They didn't build in nearly enough room to increase the SALT cap and also accomplish the rest of the tax agenda and the rest of the spending agenda that President Trump and Congressional Republicans want to accomplish.

I pulled up some numbers here in front of me because I have a little calculator on my computer with all of these different spending programs. Just to raise the SALT cap to $15,000 for individuals, $30,000 for married couples, that's $0.5 trillion. If you just eliminate sales tax and income tax from SALT, that's $300 billion. These are incredibly, incredibly expensive tax cut. Republicans clearly did not build in room to implement these.

Brian Lehrer: I have one last question. Jacob, I know you got to jump. If you need to go, Joe will answer this question. The Mike Johnson clip that we played indicated that this budget framework isn't only about tax cuts, even though that's what's getting the most press, that and Medicaid. It's also about funding the immigration crackdown, more money for defense, and also for drilling for fossil fuels. Joe, does the Republican Congress think the fossil fuels industry, with its mega profitability, needs government subsidies?

Joseph Rosenberg: No, that's a good question. Those categories that you mentioned are about the $300 billion that this blueprint looks to spend. That's partially to support the fossil fuel industry. It is also pretty explicit pushback against initiatives that were started during the Biden administration or administering the Biden--

Brian Lehrer: To reverse the climate policies and those subsidies.

Joseph Rosenberg: To reverse the subsidies for clean energy, which the tax subsidies for those are likely to be put on the table in this bill as well.

Brian Lehrer: Briefly, what about the immigration crackdown? They sell that as preventing American taxpayers from having to spend money on people here illegally, but is the crackdown a net benefit, Joe, or a net expense, according even to their framework?

Joseph Rosenberg: Yes, no, that's a good question too, the issue of immigration. I think you said at the beginning, a lot of these folks, undocumented, are not eligible for federal programs. Some of them, in fact, do pay taxes, either through withholding taxes or other taxes. More than that, I think even in order to try to make the math work, the Republican leadership has put forward the notion that this will really help the economy, but these are workers, and so trying to get the economy to grow and to prosper while you're limiting population, those are going to be hard things to square.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, I see you're still there, so if you want to pile on and help respond to those last two questions I asked, or do you happen to know how much Joe and Jane, taxpayer, subsidize big oil or anything you want to say on that last question I asked. Joe.

Jacob Bogage: I want to touch on the first part of your question, less the big oil part, because they do feel like there's revenue from more energy leases, especially in protected wildland areas. I do want to take apart some of the other things this bill or this budget wants to do. One of them, and the most noteworthy to me, is this immigration crackdown. There's two parts to that. One of that is more resources at the border, that is Trump's border wall, that is more customs and border protection, that's more technology on the border, like drones. There's some bipartisan support for some of that. If there was a separate border bill, I think it would be interesting to see how the Democratic Senate would handle that.

The other one is internal immigration enforcement. This is targeting so-called sanctuary cities, places like New York is a sanctuary city, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. Los Angeles. These are cities where local officials don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agencies to detain and deport folks. Then there's also this massive spending to round up detained in detention camps, there are other words that could be used to describe those camps, and then deport these individuals, many of whom have not committed crimes, to countries that many of whom have not lived in.

We have seen folks being deported to countries of which they are not citizens. We have seen President Trump talk about wanting to enlarge detention space at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, literally imprisoning people under the auspices of the United States out of the territorial boundaries of the United States. These are--

Brian Lehrer: He said up to 30,000 people. You're saying these are expensive programs?

Jacob Bogage: These are really expensive programs. They're character programs. Do congressional Republicans want to be the party in 2026 that voted to spend a ton of money to violently round up and detain people who have not committed crimes?

Brian Lehrer: Jacob Bogage, Congressional economics correspondent for The Washington Post, Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, part of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Thank you both very much for being so wonky and so clear about your wonkiness for a lay audience, talking about the House budget blueprint that passed last night. Thank you very much.

Jacob Bogage: Great to be with you, Brian.

Joseph Rosenberg: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.

 

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