Senate Republicans Continue Their Negotiations to Advance "Big Beautiful Bill" This Week.
The budget bill will likely see significant action in the Senate this week. The bill seeks to cut taxes for the rich paid for by slashing hundreds of billions of dollars rural America depends on.
Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate are seeking to make advances with their version of the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act this week. The GOP bill would cut trillions of dollars in spending for domestic programs that primarily benefit poor and working class people in order to pay for tax cuts that would primarily benefit billionaires, multimillionaires, and wealthy corporations. The bill includes enormous cuts to programs and services that rural people, rural communities, and rural economies have relied on for years.
There is still a lot to be worked out. The Senate Finance Committee is expected to provide some of the details it is changing to the House-passed “big beautiful bill” Monday evening, according to Politico. Tax and Medicaid provisions are still being worked out.
The emerging Senate draft of the bill is slightly different from the version the House of Representatives passed in May. That means that if the Senate is successful in passing their draft, the House and Senate will have to meet in a “conference committee” to negotiate a final bill that can pass both chambers.
In terms of process, there is currently not a final full draft of the full Senate bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) had previously stated he hopes to release the final draft early this week. Yesterday, Thune told Fox News Sunday that he would keep the Senate in session through the Fourth of July recess if necessary to pass President Donald Trump’s key domestic agenda.
The Senate Agriculture Committee finalized their section of the bill last week. Like the House bill, the Senate draft makes gigantic cuts to SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps) and large increases to government payments to rowcrop farmers. The Senate cuts to SNAP are slightly less harsh than the House bill, but would still have deep, deep impacts on rural America. Proposed program cuts include:
SNAP cuts that would harm rural people, farmers supplying food to SNAP recipients, food system workers, rural grocers, and more.
Cuts to farm conservation programs.
Cuts to programs that benefit farmers focused on local markets.
Cuts to food processing and distribution efforts focused on local markets.
Cuts to rural economic development and infrastructure programs.
Cuts to rural affordable housing programs.
In addition to the cuts through the Agriculture Committee, the emerging Senate draft would make cuts to other programs vital to rural America, such as Medicaid. Medicaid provides health insurance for millions of rural people, and hundreds of rural hospitals depend on Medicaid for their survival.
Like the House bill, the Senate draft also makes large cuts to clean energy programs. Those cuts would likely hamper continued growth in the booming rural clean energy economy.
Republicans are still trying to convince some budget hawk holdouts to vote for the package. The budget process could also face delays due to recent events requiring Senate attention, such as the recent Israel-Iran bombings and the assassination of a Minnesota state legislator among others.
Stay tuned throughout the week as Congressional negotiations continue.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.
Nasty stuff, to put it far too mildly, but thanks for staying on it, compadre.