Congress’ work overnight on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

Shortly after the House Energy and Commerce Committee session opened on Tuesday afternoon to consider Medicaid cuts and other pieces of Republicans’ domestic policy bill, protesters started shouting at lawmakers to “keep your greedy hands off our Medicaid.”

The Capitol Police say officers arrested 26 people for illegally protesting inside a congressional building.

Chairman Brett Guthrie tried to keep control amid a shouting match over whether members of the committee were allowed to use the word “lying” in their remarks, says The New York Times. Republicans had been allowed to say that Democrats were lying about the scope of the Medicaid cuts, but Democrats were prohibited from saying that President Trump was lying about his intention to protect the program. An informal agreement to avoid using the word “lie” for the rest of the session fell apart a few hours later.

Some Democratic senators came by to watch, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Tina Smith of Minnesota.

Two panels still were in session on Wednesday morning, working their way through more than 100 amendments from Democrats “that were largely failing,” says The Associated Press.

This is “the biggest political and legislative debate for the Republicans leading Congress since Trump’s first term, setting up a career-defining clash over the nation’s priorities, all coming at a time of economic unease with Trump’s trade war and other uncertainties,” says AP.

The goal for GOP lawmakers is to extend and enhance tax cuts approved in 2017, adding the president’s 2024 campaign promises of no taxes on tips, Social Security income and car loan interest, says AP.

There’s also a larger standard deduction, $32,000 for couples; an increase to the Child Tax Credit and a potentially higher cap of $30,000 on state and local tax deductions, known as SALT, that’s still being negotiated. The offsets are $1.9 trillion in savings mainly from the rollback of green energy tax credits, for a net tally of $3.7 trillion in costs over the decade, according to the most recent estimates — along with billions more in savings from the safety net cuts.

And Republicans are upping spending on their GOP priorities, with $350 billion for Trump’s mass deportation plans and funding for the Pentagon. 

At the same time, Republicans are seeking to defray the lost tax revenue and avoid skyrocketing national deficits with another GOP goal — scaling back federal spending. The Republicans are proposing cuts of nearly $800 billion over the coming decade to Medicaid, which is used by 70 million Americans; $290 billion to food aid in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP; and others.