Jacob Leibenluft
Center on Budget
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Past articles by Jacob:
Trump “$1.5 Trillion” Infrastructure Plan Is a Mirage
Administration officials claim that the President’s new infrastructure plan will support $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investment, but his 2019 budget reveals that that number’s a mirage: the President would cut annual federal support for infrastructure in the long run and shift costs to states, cities, and private individuals. → Read More
Republican Leaders’ Broken Promises on Taxes, the Budget, and Health
Now that the House and Senate have both passed the Republican tax bill on party-line votes, we’ve updated our list of promises that Republican leaders broke by passing the bill. Here are seven promises that President Trump and other Republican leaders made about taxes and health coverage that the bill breaks. → Read More
Tax Bill Ends Child Tax Credit for About 1 Million Children
The Republican tax bill would deny the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to roughly 1 million low-income children in working families who lack a Social Security Number (SSN) – even though their parents face payroll and other taxes on their income. → Read More
Republican Leaders’ Broken Promises on Taxes, the Budget, and Health
The House- and Senate-passed tax bills, from which a House-Senate conference committee will fashion a final bill, violate a number of promises from President Trump and other Republican leaders about taxes and health coverage. Here are seven of their broken promises. Broken Promise #1: “obody in the middle class is going to get a tax increase.” – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, November… → Read More
Last-Minute Changes Worsened Already Bad Senate Tax Bill
Rushing to pass a tax bill last week, Senate Republicans worsened its harmful provisions and highlighted the worst elements of their process for enacting it. → Read More
GOP Process Designed to Obscure Tax Plan’s Effects
Congress is moving forward with reckless speed on a tax plan that touches most aspects of the federal tax code. → Read More
Tax Bill’s Child Tax Credit Change Would Hurt 3 Million Children
An especially egregious, and little noticed, provision of the tax bill before the House Ways and Means Committee would harm 3 million low-income children in working families by denying them the Child Tax Credit (CTC) if their parents file their taxes with an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) rather than a Social Security Number (SSN). → Read More
House GOP Tax Plan Likely to Contain Same Basic Flaws as Earlier Versions of the Plan
Core features lead to the plan’s upward tilt, high cost, and harm for most Americans. → Read More
Revised Version of Cassidy-Graham Proposal Is More of the Same
The revised version makes some changes to funding formulas, but it retains the core structure — and harmful components — of the original bill, which would ultimately cause tens of millions of people to lose health coverage and weaken coverage for millions more. → Read More
Commentary: Rushed Senate Consideration of Cassidy-Graham Would Be Designed to Hide Bill’s Severe Flaws
Congressional Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) through their latest plan, from Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham. → Read More
Like Other ACA Repeal Bills, Cassidy-Graham Plan Would Add Millions to Uninsured, Destabilize Individual Market
The bill would cause many millions of people to lose coverage, radically restructure and deeply cut Medicaid, and increase out-of-pocket costs for individual market consumers. → Read More
Middle-Class Families Would Face Higher Costs, Worse Coverage Under Senate Health Bill
Alongside the Senate bill’s devastating impact on coverage and well-being for lower-income families, the considerable damage it would inflict on middle-class families has received less attention. → Read More
Senate Likely to Keep Using Secretive Process to Hide Health Bill’s Damaging Impact
In recent weeks, the Senate has launched a process for revising the House-passed bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that, due to its extreme secrecy, independent observers have described as “a situation without precedent” for major health legislation. → Read More
Commentary: Once Passed, Medicaid Cuts Won’t Be Easily Reversed
Once Congress both changes Medicaid’s basic structure and enacts large annual savings, those cuts are highly unlikely to be reversed. In fact, those structural changes would create a political dynamic that could lead to even larger cuts in the future: → Read More
What to Look for in CBO’s Analysis of House-Passed Health Bill
A careful analysis of the score will show that the Senate cannot undo these harmful effects without revamping the bill’s entire structure — namely, deep cuts to coverage that pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers. → Read More
Trump Reiterates: He’d Prevent States From Protecting People With Pre-Existing Conditions
Advocates of the House Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have argued that its new provisions simply let states make their own choices about protecting people with pre-existing conditions and essential health benefits. → Read More
MacArthur Amendment Would Mean Return to Pre-ACA Law for People with Pre-Existing Conditions
Rep. Tom MacArthur has argued that his amendment to the House Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make “coverage of pre-existing conditions sacrosanct for all Americans.” In fact, it would do the exact opposite: end nationwide protections for people with pre-existing conditions and restore the pre-ACA status quo, when these protections existed only in states that chose… → Read More
GOP’s Health Agenda Would Undercut Their Vow to Let States Set Essential Health Benefits
Republicans argue that repealing the ten “essential health benefits” that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires every health plan to cover would simply allow states to make their own choices about what benefits to require. → Read More
Commentary: No, the House GOP Health Bill Won’t Protect Medicaid Beneficiaries
The bill effectively ends the Medicaid expansion, freezing out millions of people who would have gotten coverage and causing current enrollees benefitting from the expansion to lose their coverage as well. → Read More
CBO: Millions Would Pay More for Less Under House GOP Health Plan
Along with reducing health coverage by 24 million, the House Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act would make coverage less available and less affordable for virtually all age and income groups. → Read More