House Republicans pulled an all-nighter to get their Big Bill of Evil passed and shipped off to the Senate. As I wrote yesterday, it’s not impossible that the Senate will tone it down a bit. We’ll see. Note that the final House bill cuts Medicaid more. Emine Yücel at Talking Points Memo:

The massive reconciliation package — which already included massive cuts to Medicaid and the popular food assistance program SNAP, as well as tax cuts that will largely benefit wealthy Americans — got a makeover on Wednesday largely to appease the far-right members who were threatening to sink the bill.

Notably, leadership made substantial changes to the Medicaid portion of the bill overnight.

The new text moves up the start date of Medicaid work requirements from Jan. 1, 2029 to Dec. 31, 2026. That was one of the demands members of the Freedom Caucus had been pushing since last week.

The bill already included a provision that banned coverage of gender-affirming care for minors. The new text extends that ban to adults under the program as well. Republicans also expanded the criteria for a provision that could cause states to lose a portion of the funds they receive through the federal matching rate if they offer coverage to undocumented immigrants.

Another notable change is expected to incentivize states not to expand their programs under the Affordable Care Act. A newly added measure would give states a financial incentive not to expand coverage outside of the traditional enrollees, making higher payments to providers, like hospitals, for uncompensated care.

Some of the blue state people were able to raise the SALT cap, but IMO that’s not going to help them much in the next elections if Medicaid and Medicare are screwed.

Here’s another endearing change, reported in the New York Times:

The domestic policy bill proposes to stop efforts to improve staffing levels in long-term care homes in a section titled “preventing wasteful spending.” Specifically, the bill prohibits the health secretary from enacting a Biden administration rule that was meant to increase the number of care workers and improve conditions for about 1.2 million people in nursing homes in the United States.

But if they cut enough Medicaid, most of those places are going to have to close, anyway, so what’s the problem?

Here’s another bit from the Times:

The market for U.S. government bonds, the bedrock of the global financial system, continued to shudder on Thursday, as President Trump’s bill to extend expensive tax cuts and create new ones without significantly slashing spending passed through the House of Representatives. The bill has unnerved investors, deepening worries that the country’s debt is becoming unmanageable.

Yields on U.S. bonds, which underpin consumer and business interest rates around the world, from mortgages to corporate loans, have been rising in recent weeks. Yields rise as prices fall. Higher yields reflect investors’ concerns that lending to the government by buying its debt has become more risky.

Ya think? I wouldn’t lend money to the U.S. right now.

I’d like to think there are at least some Republican senators — and it wouldn’t take all that many — who recognize what a disaster this is and don’t want to be associated with it. We’ll see. House Republicans are just nuts. Or else they’re a lot more intimidated.

Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic.

The heedlessness of the process is an indication of its underlying fanaticism. The members of the Republican majority are behaving not like traditional conservatives but like revolutionaries who, having seized power, believe they must smash up the old order as quickly as possible before the country recognizes what is happening.

House Republicans are fully aware of the political and economic risks of this endeavor. Cutting taxes for the affluent is unpopular, and cutting Medicaid is even more so. That is why, instead of proudly proclaiming what the bill will accomplish, they are pretending it will do neither. House Republicans spent months warning of the political dangers of cutting Medicaid, a program that many of their own constituents rely on. The party’s response is to fall back on wordplay, pretending that their scheme of imposing complex work requirements, which are designed to cull eligible recipients who cannot navigate the paperwork burden, will not throw people off the program—when that is precisely the effect they are counting on to produce the necessary savings.

Except it may not produce savings. When states have tried work requirements they’ve found the “savings” were mostly eaten by the additional bureaucracy needed to implement the program. Although maybe they just plan to use AI now.