Making America Gross Again: Big Fugly Bill Hits the Senate Floor [UPDATE]
[NB: check the byline, thanks. Updates will be added at the bottom of this post. /~Rayne]
Trump’s big ugly bill will be up for a vote in the Senate this morning.
It takes money from hungry children and gives it to the already rich as Marcy has previously said, and the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities has quantified.
But this bill is a mortal menace to many Americans because of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.
ER doctor McNadoMD spelled out the revolting death threats this bill poses:
EMTALA: Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986. They want to ditch 39-year-old legislation which assures Americans obtain
— a medical screening examination (MSE);
— are stabilized with an emergency medical condition;
— are transferred or accepted as a patient as appropriate and needed.
What are we left with if the GOP Senate knocks off EMTALA?
We already lost so many health care professionals because of COVID and have yet to replace them. COVID also cost this nation hospitals, thanks in no small part to right-wing refuseniks who rejected vaccines and masks. Rural hospitals were at risk of closure before COVID; 19 were closed in 2019. A net 50 rural hospitals were closed between 2017 and 2023.
We simply don’t have enough health care professionals or hospitals BEFORE the damage this bill’s cuts could wreak.
My 94-year-old father-in-law, a veteran, died last August. He ended up in the ER more than three times inside his last 18 months because his nursing home couldn’t handle his needs — basically a soft form of eviction until he was stabilized and returned to the home. This happened in a small town where the resources for his care were limited. If the local hospital closed, he’d have simply been evicted and died.
But I suspect the GOP doesn’t give a shit about lifelong GOP voters once they’re as elderly as my FIL was, without the kind of money to burn on political donations. They certainly don’t care about veterans. The GOP congressional caucus has become the death panels they warned us about.
And who pays for the unpaid ER visits — before the hospital goes bankrupt? We who have private insurance do, through increases to our premiums as hospitals increase overall charges to absorb the losses. This is an invisible tax on us, where Medicaid is fully visible.
In other words this is a definite death sentence for a group of Americans and legal residents who have kidney failure.
I don’t have words for this, but this is reality.
This is a real massacre being staged in the Senate, Kellyanne.
Across America especially in smaller cities and towns, Americans are going to face increasing poverty, illness, and death if this big fugly bill passes.
~ ~ ~
I need to get this post up so that you can see the problem and start working the phones and emails. I’ll continue to add to this post for a bit because you need to read what this ER doctor says about the bill’s likely impact if it passes.
Contact your senators and tell them this bill, H.R. 1 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is simply not acceptable. Contact your family and friends, explain quickly how bad this bill is and tell them to contact their senators, too.
Congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121
or use Resist.bot or 5Calls.
Call even if your senator(s) are Democrats or Independents, because they need to know how you feel, they need to know backsliding isn’t acceptable. Don’t trust they will do the right thing without hearing from you (I’m looking at Pennsylvanians especially given Sen. Fetterman’s increasing unreliability).
~ ~ ~
UPDATE — 2:09 PM ET 01-JUL-2025 —
The POS BFB passed with JD Vance casting the tie breaking vote.
Via Associated Press:
Senate Republicans hauled President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill to passage Tuesday on the narrowest of votes, pushing past opposition from Democrats and their own GOP ranks after a turbulent overnight session.
Vice President JD Vance broke a 50-50 tie to push it over the top. The three Republicans opposing the bill were Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
The GOP owns this POS. It’s on them, they have committed to hurting this country.
Furthermore, they have completely abandoned any pretense of being the party of fiscal responsibility having voted to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
** Do not let this lead you to despair. Let it anger you, and let that righteous anger motivate you to action.**
Continue to call your members of Congress — excoriate them if they voted for this POS BFB, thank them for rejecting it if they didn’t.
Find out when your members of Congress will be home over this break and whether they are having in-district sessions. Be there in person to communicate with them.
Our next major concerns should be how to care for others who will be directly damaged by this GOP bullshit, and how to protect the elections ahead.
Take the holiday break to rest up and ready yourself for the next phase.
I dunno if this is the final – or best – read out on those last second giveaways to draw Murkowski, etc into voting to proceed the other night. These are the ones the Senate Parliamentarian nixed in the din of the hoopla over the Big Ugly passing that hurdle 51-49 the other night.
“…
The revision helps Republicans shore up the spending cuts they need to fund the bill, but it could also alienate three crucial senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — who have been pushing to scale back the Medicaid cuts.
…
”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-republicans-restore-medicaid-cuts-161131357.html
I am of the stomach turning opinion all of this is going to pass in a one bad enough form or another because until MAGA America feels the pain nothing really can change much.
Unrelated side note. Canada did a version of Trump’s TACO dance this AM by walking back their digital services tax. WTF – they are way too nice.
Cut Canada some slack, or haven’t you realized with a nearly-global monopoly on certain tech services that Canada can be easily extorted.
The US is also holding a number of Canadians grabbed by ICE (one died this week in custody). They may be hostages.
OK – I agree. But I still think Canadians are way too nice – and I know and like a lot of Canadians.
My mom once worked – going way back to the late 1960s – at a Surfside Beach, (Miami) FL winter destination for Canadians. She was always trying to set me up on dates with the female vacationing high school family members. I suppose I should have been more appreciative, but my girlfriend at the time was not.
Fun fact. The building she worked at was next door to the 2021 Champlain Towers South building collapse, But that was ay before that death trap was built.
I’ll stop digressing.
Yes, please get back on topic. Especially since that story you shared at that Yahoo link says the Senate’s current iteration is still going to damage Medicaid and our health care system:
My wife and I were once accused (er., mistaken) for being Canadian because we were so nice…
I another comment, some facts from a couple of Kaiser Family Foundation articles on who gets Medicaid.
The bill also guts ACA support for the exchanges, making ACA useless. However, in typical GOP fashion, these changes don’t kick in until after the midterm elections so the MAGAs can go on the trail and claim nothing was cut. It also sets the Ds up for blame if they regain Congress in 2026, because there is no way Convict-1 / Krasnov / TACO signs a repeal of this dreck bill.
The funny thing is that the cuts may well affect the mid-terms, because the rates for the next year may be available by election day.
Thanks to a change in income and the exchange, my insurance premium dropped by more than 50% — I almost cried last November when I learned I would save that much money. I can imagine people doing just the opposite before mid-term election day if they find out their health care premiums will more than double.
Which means we should plan on a campaign called Check Your 2027 Health Care Premium beginning in October 2026.
Of course little is said in corporate media about the congressional perk-“Office of the Attending Physician” – Provided to congress members, staff and families at little or no cost. $56 per month additional premium give full range of medical services with ZERO co-pays or deductables. Additionally congress critters are able to use military hospitals and clinics at no charge.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username AND EMAIL ADDRESS each time you comment. The last comment by user Canine Whisperer used a different email address than the one on this comment, triggering auto-moderation. We don’t even ask for a valid/working email address, only that you use the same one each time you comment. /~Rayne]
Was listening to a podcast interview with an economist who has worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations who said he has never seen legislators so oblivious to the wants, needs, and opinions of their constituents.
My personal belief is that the Republicans in office feel they can ignore majority disapproval because after Trump got away with lying about the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol and was re-elected, that elections simply won’t matter anymore.
Besides that, many incumbent Democrats in Congress are not using their power sufficiently to stop them (see Chuck Schumer and Dick Durban). Strongly worded letters and reading bills out loud are not gonna do it.
One has to define ‘constituent’ for these guys. Remember the GOP pols exist to get elected, and nothing else. MAGA is 30 – 35% of the voting public, but that proportion doubles for GOP primaries and the MAGA tribe will support whatever Rupert and Convict-1 / Krasnov / TACO tells them to. That’s why Tillis pulled the plug on his Senate career.
Do we have a D to run against Collins this time, or Murkowski?
So far, none of the bigger hitters (Mills) have stepped up to challenge Collins. We have Jordan Woods, who was Katie Porter’s COS. He seems perfectly reasonable to me, but Collins will destroy him.
“…Besides that, many incumbent Democrats in Congress are not using their power sufficiently to stop them (see Chuck Schumer and Dick Durban)…” Without an explanation of what you think they should be doing, this is an empty criticism.
If you’ve been reading here, you shouldn’t need that explanation, especially for Durbin.
As PJ Evans suggests, you must not read here much. When confronted with the ruthless, hardball tactics from Mitch McConnell and John Thune, Dick Durbin’s usual response is to act as if he’s having tea on the vicarage lawn and someone spilled milk on his saucer. Chuck Schumer isn’t much better.
Durbin is in his fifth term as a US Senator. A couple of months ago, he announced he would not run for a sixth term, when he would be 82. His state is in safe Democratic hands. He could do us all a favor if he resigned now and let Gov. Pritzker appoint an interim replacement.
I haven’t seen any answer to my question yet. OK Durbin should resign. What’s that got to do with Schumar?
It’s “Schumer.” The answers you already have boil down to, do your own homework.
If you are going to be critical and offer nothing in response you are the enemy.
And you are helping matters how now? You’ve flooded the thread with your demands that others satisfy your expectations, while failing to explain just what tools the elder Senate Democrats have used to exhaustion to prevent this big fugly bill from passing.
Schumer demanded a full reading of the bill, used hours and hours of debate, inserted a vote-a-rama by way of amendments — what else have they done you feel someone here needs to spell out for you?
Lay off the enemy talk. We don’t need this thread further derailed by a circular firing squad. There’s actual work to be done and if you’re here typing out your spleen you’re not doing any.
Note to community members: the “flounce” comment was deleted; replies to it will not appear. Let’s stay focused.
Schumer’s forcing of the reading of the full bill let many GOP senators know things that apparently parachuted in at the last minute, such as when Lindsey wondered how some excise tax provisions ‘got in there’. You guys put this together and ran the committees, so how come you don’t know?
Elno’s rabid opposition is providing cover to say no as well as a potentially large revenue source for re-election committees for primary ads. Convict-1 / Krasnov / TACO has threatened Elno’s contracts so this may actually be a real rift.
Rayne, thanks for this kick in the butt. Anger without action helps nobody.
Yup, MAGA is a death cult. I had some of them tell me via comments that elderly covid deaths were no big deal since they had lived past life expectancy (78).
I left voicemails for McCormick and Fetterman urging them to “vote NO or people will die.”
So did I. McCormick’s mailbox is full. He’s going to vote for the bill, but I wanted to let him know I am his constituent, forcefully opposed to HR1.
David Dayen wrote an article about a month ago in which he described one strategy the Democrats could use to block this bill. I sent the article to my senators.
“Georgia State University assistant professor and former House Oversight Committee staffer Todd Phillips laid this out in a Prospect piece earlier this month. Any 30 senators can force a CRA resolution onto the floor, with a required ten hours of debate time. These resolutions would need the president’s signature, and nearly all of them wouldn’t even get the Republican votes necessary to pass the Senate. But according to Senate procedure, they have to be dealt with if enough senators force them onto the floor. They must be debated and voted upon ahead of other Senate business if brought up for consideration. This means that Democrats can tie up the Senate floor for upwards of ten hours with any single CRA resolution.”
He says it could eat up the entire session and would have prevented any consideration of the bill this session. Is that a viable tactic?
I predict the Republicans will ignore the parliamentarian and “pass” the bill anyway. They expect that the Extreme Court will rubber stamp this. AFAIK the only legal-ish way to get around the parliamentarian is to either carve out or eliminate the cloture vote AKA the faux filibuster.
Senate Press Gallery June 30, 2025 at 10:11 AM
J Bendery responds to ^^^:
https://bsky.app/profile/jbendery.bsky.social/post/3lstelz6mik2m
June 30, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Links to HuffPo:
Senate Republicans Wound Filibuster To Pass Debt Bomb Republicans used a new budget gimmick to obscure the cost of President Trump’s $4 trillion tax and spending bill in a new attack on the Senate’s filibuster rules.
Igor Bobic June 30, 2025 10:08 AM ET
BB Kogan:
https://bsky.app/profile/bbkogan.bsky.social/post/3lstf6wm2os2p
June 30, 2025 at 10:24 AM
The Digital Services Tax is new and hadn’t been implemented. I think it’s fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.
It will be interesting to see if Trump uses it as a big win he can gloat about and settles with Canada or if he finds some other lame excuse to muck up trade between Canada and the United States to continue with his 51st state crap.
I like my health care thank you very much.
Going to point out for comment readers that while your username may suggest you’re in the UK, you published your comment from Canada.
Americans might assume, then, you mean you like your Canadian health care which is definitely not like US health care.
Hi Rayne
Thanks for the clarification. I am indeed a Canadian. Hoping that you and the majority of your countrymen (and women) who follow Emptywheel here have a great day. No Kings Day …. I like that.
just listened to 1/2 hour of CBC call in radio where the UBC Political Economist agreed with your assessment re. the Digital Services Tax. the callers ran the gamut from agreeing with Carney to being outraged. many voiced vows to not step foot in the U.S. any time soon. while Trump’s name came up, the callers were clear the fight is with the United States. The U.S.
Us.
The USA is a flyover country for Canadians on their way to Mexico. We have legions of them here in Los Cabos.
Canada’s digital service tax is an important step toward tax fairness. It attempts to impose a small tax on income foreign corporations, not resident in Canada, receive there. That’s a big deal and the attempt is not unique to Canada.
Corporations created an industry of tax advisers who specialize in and game state efforts to take their multi-state income. The problem was made much worse as a greater percentage of the economy comes from digital services.
Happy Canada Day to all. My grandfather was a Canadian WW1 veteran (and II but he was in Bermuda that time) wounded in action when the ammunition he was carrying up to the fire trench cooked off when a shell hit nearby. He was extremely lucky he didn’t lose any pieces, but every couple of years or so some shrapnel would start itching in his leg so the docs took it out.
I should have spiked PeteT’s comment because it was off topic and has encouraged more off topic discussion.
This thread is about the POS H.R. 1 One Big Beautiful Bill Act — let’s get back on topic.
David Dayen’s articles at prospect (dot) org are a very good source as the bill works its way through. [He is also “ddayen.bsky.social”]
He is able to game out the stakes in a clear way, i.e. Lisa Murkowski’s “Gold Rush” getting whittled down putting her in a much harder public position. Re. the Vote-A-Rama, he says: “There are only a few that could have meaning for the bill contents: 1) Blackburn/Hawley to strip out the state AI regulatory ban; 2) Collins on increasing rural hospital funds or adding a millionaire’s tax; 3) Scott/Lee/Lummis/Johnson on phasing out the ACA Medicaid expansion.
Stats from the Kaiser Family Foundation (one link below states most ARE working) show that only ca. 33% of Medicaid recipients are 20-65 YO. Two thirds work full or part time, another 11% are disabled, about the same are full time caregivers, and ca. 7% are in education programs. Only ca. 8% are possibly capable of working who are not, and many of these can’t find work or retired before age 65. This small number is whom some of the RW call “deadbeats”, but they are few in number, with potential savings being insignificant.
Of course the real purpose is to force those deserving of Medicaid benefits off of the program if they fail arcane hard to follow rules the RW wants to enforce. Not surprisingly Republican claims are are completely fraudulent.
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/most-medicaid-adults-are-working-kff-analysis-finds#:~:text=Four%20years%20ago%2C%20the%20Biden,or%20disability%2C%20or%20school%20attendance.
The people who want work requirements have never had to look for a job after about the age of 40. After 50, it’s much harder, and after 60, fuhgeddaboudit.
Not to mention how many desk jobs businesses are trying to replace with AI.
Scary was Long Covid at 62 and hoping a desk was still available at 64 (soon to be 65) Remote work was a help – also having a large part of compensation based on performance. Sink or swim. I have always swam fairly well – the fear was whether I could remember how to swim at all after 16 months.
AI and offshoring shrinks the number of available desks. Quality of service suffers, but there is more cash swimming in the upper floors. What is most frustrating is how the GOP creates the illusion that people receiving Medicaid somehow benefit in a manner similar to other public cash benefits available to citizens that need a leg up.
Who quits work to get healthcare? It doesn’t replace income.
*apologies for earlier errors with user name – I forgot whether I used a dash, underscore or a space between names. I would go back to look, sometimes as long as 12 hours and not be able to find my post. I just thought that Akismet didn’t like me. I will remember from here on in.
Long COVID — ugh. Roughly 8 percent of Americans have had long COVID with varying levels of disability. How are these folks who continue to experience long COVID supposed to fulfill work requirements, especially when many have suffered some level of cognitive diminishment due to ongoing brain fog and other neurological symptoms? These effects may be temporary but we still don’t know enough about the long-term repercussions of this disorder. What if these work requirements end up increasing levels of disability over the long run?
The GOP is just plain incapable of systems thinking and lousy at governance.
PJ Evans, that’s a really good point. Which is why the MAGAs aren’t mentioning it.
I knew people who were laid off in the early 2000s, and never caught up again, because they couldn’t get jobs as good as those they had had. (In one case, the business was sold, and management handed over to a guy who saw it as competition for his previous workgroup.) Killed their marriage and cost them the house (though I think poor money management was part of it).
Reply to
P J Evans:
June 30, 2025 at 10:15 pm
Also family caregivers. It’s a full time job (and sometimes two full time jobs!) caring for older or disabled family members. These unpaid heroes would lose coverage because they’re not “earning a paycheck.”
So very true. Somewhere (maybe in a missing KFF link) I read that most of those unable to find work are older than 55, many older than 60. These privileged jerks promoting this crap have no idea what it’s like in the real world.
The senate has a live-feed from the floor.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/floor_activity_pail.htm
“motion to commit on HR1” failed 48-52. The Great Googly Moogly isn’t being particularly helpful about defining a motion to commit, but it looks like it would have sent the bill back to committee. Anyway, with that split, I doubt this tally is good news as far as slowing or mitigating this impending catastrophe.
Rayne, thank you for a post that keeps the community’s eye on the critical ball. Trump & Frenemies have proven most adept exploding flashbang distractions in our faces; whether bombing Iran or occupying Los Angeles, nothing is too outrageous for this crowd. We resistors need to stay focused on their core villainy.
It has two overt prongs now: (1) demonizing, disenfranchising, and terrorizing millions of residents based on thinly veiled racism / white nationalist pogroms; and (2) codifying into law a monstrous rigging of our tax and social services infrastructure. The money we pour into the government will get even further diverted, to radically reinforce existing discrepancies between those subject to terror and loss of services, as opposed to those gaining power and control. It is a big and mortally sadistic bill.
Predation on “illegals” and enacting legislation that widens inequality are *overt* aims. Meanwhile, concomitant with each of these and compatible with other seemingly disparate efforts, Trump and cronies continue clawing away at Ye Olde Rule of Law, picking at it and flicking bits away as if it were merely a scab forming over that nasty open wound that is human nature. No matter how many centuries of earnest thought and emotional investment might have gone into finally forming that scab, it means truly nothing to these people. Just a patch of dead skin. Crack it in the middle and pull quarters of it off when you’re bored. We know this: Trump gets bored easily.
The Felon Guy’s DOJ is now suing L.A. for not helping ICE kidnap people.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/the-trump-administration-has-sued-los-angeles-20401033.php
L.A.-area cities have cancelled July 4th events for fear of ICE.
https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/ice-raid-california-fear-july-4-cancellation-20397692.php
Not that I want to help Jackboot Barbie, but there is the Gold Cup going on and Mexico vs. Honduras is Wednesday. I hope I’m wrong but given Miller’s quota I would not be surprised to see ICE show up since both fan bases are passionate about their teams.
I would not be surprised to see ICE show up in Tijuana and shove whoever they find into vans for deportation to El Salvador. Or Rwanda. They’ve been given a quota. When you give people a quota and scream at their faces, they will try anything.
Stephen Miller knows this. He’s counting on it–the “try anything” part.
It sounds like the county animal control guy I heard about in west Texas, who was going out, into other counties eve, and taking dogs right out of yards, because he got paid by the pick-up.
This is what heightens my personal terror. We know some American citizens have been swept up. How many more will be seized based only on their color as part of Baby Goebbel’s “try anything” approach?
replying to PJ Evans and Rayne:
Terror. That is the goal; the deaths and heartbreak, while perhaps gratifying to sociopathic leaders, are incidental. Terror is the essential goal they must attain.
Depriving actual citizens of health care and, critically, hope feeds this campaign by both lowering quality of life for many lesser-off people and families (this putting them adjacent to the “illegals”) and rendering them more susceptible to the argument that their losses are due to “immigrants” taking from them what they had before, to say nothing of what they should have had all along.
Thus a worsening of inequity serves both goals. Trump’s bill works hand in glove with his evil ICE regime.
They’re also going after naturalized citizens, for whatever crimes they can find or imagine.
(I have a nephew who’s naturalized. It took him at least 25 years to get through that system,and he came as a refugee in the early 90s.)
Well….it passed by 1 vote, with JD Vance breaking the tie. Susan Collins voted NO because it was safe for her and Lisa Murkowski accepted the pork offered and voted YES. Bleah….
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyzzzdj15vo
Moderate
Could there be an odder mutt
than the one who got her cut
with a teeter-totter strut
and claims to be a moderate?
Now she tries to blot her glut
Cross her T’s and dot her rut
Hopes that she’s not fodder, But
we know she’s not a moderate.
I wish I could skip all other sources and just get all my news from you, SL. Johnny on the spot with the pith. Every time. Favorites:
Now she tries to blot her glut
Cross her T’s and dot her rut
The way those monosyllabic and consonant-heavy words stack up in my mouth (and mind) makes me tumble into misreadings (“gut” for “glut”) that combine with the propulsive quadrameter to send me right back into the lines…This is a compliment!
My fave: “fodder, but” and “moderate”
I just returned from Alaska and I as I thought about all those cruise ships gliding up and down the west coast, I wondered if California, Oregon and Washington could buy some land or businesses in AK and ship their Medicaid patients to the land of many exemptions? I am certainly arguing for it to be done in a humane and above board way, but it seems like an idea, that if proposed and is somewhat feasible, would drive the GOP nuts?
That’s an interesting idea…I wonder if there’s a way to meld the trend of retirement on cruise ships with this idea?
The pitch to a cruise ship company would be Medicaid recipients from CA/OR/WA living on vessels that assume “residency” in Alaska.
We’re gonna’ need a bigger dock, though. LOL
Two things have been circling my mind for the past few months.
1. “Concentration Moon” from We’re Only in it for the Money (the 1968 LP with the liner notes that mention The Penal Colony and the Japanese internment camps). The LP is available at Internet Archive.
2. The National Socialist policy of terminating the lives of many with various handicaps in the “Some Life is Just Not Worth Living” (Lebenunwertes Lebens) program that had its intellectual origins not in Germany but in the United States.