Dear Mainer: The Senate GOP is making the Big Bad Bill even worse

With the rainy days behind us and having already experienced one full-blown heatwave, it’s safe to say summer has finally arrived in Maine. If you’re like me, you’re looking forward to time outdoors with the family and making the most of what this fleeting season has to offer.

But while Independence Day is mere days away, I am back in DC this week to take what is likely to be my final vote on the GOP’s reconciliation bill — the budget package that’s been pushed through Congress on party lines.

As I wrote last month when the House took up the bill, this plan is a rehash of the same harmful agenda we saw the last time the GOP had a governing trifecta in Washington: huge tax breaks for the rich and corporations paid for by cutting health care for the working poor and record-breaking deficit spending.

This bill is deeply flawed, in part because it was created through a deeply flawed process. The GOP abandoned regular order, negotiating with themselves and the White House without even pretending to reach across the aisle. The end result is a bloated, complex piece of legislation with so many moving pieces that it’s hard to draw attention to any one of them.

But these two charts from independent analyses of the Senate plan tell the story pretty succinctly. The first speaks to how tax giveaways for the wealthiest households are offset by cuts to programs that provide health care and food assistance to people who need it:

The second shows how the Senate proposal results in poorer Americans taking home even less in after-tax income than the House version:

I’m writing to you about this bill again because it’s become clear that it is the only major piece of legislation that the House GOP plans to pass this year. And unfortunately, the Senate is poised only to make the bill worse. For example:

• More Hits to Our Health Care:

  • The Senate adds another $130 billion in Medicaid cuts on top of what the House GOP already passed, for a total of $930 billion in cuts. Millions of Americans are expected to lose their health coverage.

  • They also target states that expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, such as by blocking state spending to support Medicaid providers and reducing states’ ability to raise revenue for rural hospitals. The end result saps funding from rural hospitals that are already facing tremendous budget pressures and may have to close their doors, making health care worse for everyone in these communities whether they use Medicaid for health care or not. That could include rural hospitals in Ellsworth and Presque Isle.

• An Even Larger National Debt: The Senate proposal will likely add up to $3.9 trillion to the debt through Fiscal Year 2034, according to the nonpartisan group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That’s up to $1 trillion more in borrowing costs than under the House’s already record-breaking debt impact.

• Additional tax giveaways for the wealthy: The House version already gave roughly $90,000 a year to households in the form of tax breaks earning more than $1 million annually while giving just $90 to low-income households, many of which will actually lose money as a result of health care and food assistance cuts. To add insult to injury, the Senate piled on even more tax giveaways for the very well-off, such as a new capital gains carveout for big tech companies and venture capitalists.

The Senate touts itself as the “cooling saucer” of Congress, where legislation from the House is made more moderate or responsible. If only that were true in this case.

When I voted against the earlier version of this bill, I said it was one of the easiest votes I’ve ever taken because Mainers want more health care, not less; They want corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share, not be given new tax breaks; And they want Congress to get our fiscal house in order, not burden future generations with unsustainable debt.

The Senate has only made the bill worse. So I’ll be voting no again: For our health care, for tax fairness and for fiscal stability.