One promise, of “no taxes on Social Security,” had been bent into a four-figure tax deduction — $4,000 in the House’s version of the bill, $6,000 in the Senate version that may replace it.
But a fact sheet shared by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday repeated the claim the bill simply ended Social Security taxes outright.
Another Trump promise, to not cut Medicaid, morphed into work requirements designed to remove people from the program, on the assumption that they might find jobs and get insurance coverage that way. Republicans like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who had inveighed against Medicaid cuts, dropped their opposition.
To sell the bill, Republicans separated Medicaid recipients into two camps, as delineated by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Republicans distinguished between the “truly disabled and needy,” whom they argue the 60-year-old program was designed to help, and those who should be paying or working for their health care. That second group includes noncitizens covered by state health care programs, as well as people in states that had adopted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.
But the Senate-passed version of the bill did not actually cut off Medicaid for noncitizens — another source of confusion. A memo from the House Freedom Caucus that urged party leaders to add back “protection against illegals getting Medicaid,” linked to a study of noncitizens receiving nutrition assistance, not Medicaid.
And a House proposal to create savings funds for children — first named MAGA accounts, now named TRUMP accounts — lost a requirement that the parents have a Social Security number on the way to Senate passage, theoretically allowing undocumented parents to take advantage.
“I don’t like that,” South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the House Freedom Caucus members who wanted more changes in the bill, told Semafor of that change. “Illegals shouldn’t get a paycheck.”
Several of the changes that House Republicans obscured — and lamented, at turns — on Wednesday came thanks to the Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, a referee who has similarly trimmed Democratic ambitions in the past.
Yet that didn’t help party leaders’ case as they kept pushing into Wednesday night.
