GOP Leaders Forced to Pull Veterans Benefits Bill

Congress Capitol
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

President Trump is set to address the nation in a primetime speech that is expected to focus on election security. Trump has teased that he will make "really big news." He reportedly could raise allegations of Chinese meddling and may rehash debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 loss to Joe Biden. The possibility that he will seek to relitigate the result from six years ago has alarmed lawmakers, including Republicans who would much prefer to see the president, whose approval rating is stuck in the 30s, focus on the economy. "The people I talk to are scared shitless," an unnamed former Trump administration official told Politico.

Here's what else is happening.

Despite Lingering Divisions, House Republicans Advance $95B Budget Blueprint

Republicans took a key step Thursday in their push to enact a $95 billion budget reconciliation package, advancing the plan out of the House Budget Committee in a 20-14 vote along party lines.

The measure would allow up to $73 billion in military and intelligence funding, $12 billion in farm aid and $10 billion for election-related efforts that President Trump has prioritized.

The GOP plan still faces serious obstacles, including skepticism from fiscal hawks who want new savings to offset the additional spending. The legislation put forth by Republican leaders has no such cuts. Some Republicans are reportedly also disappointed that the reconciliation package is much narrower than initially planned and lacks a proposed $350 billion boost for the Pentagon or additional tax cuts.

Republican leaders have tried to quell any grumbling about the plan, with limited success. Vice President JD Vance reportedly tried - and failed - to address the concerns of House GOP hard-liners at a Wednesday afternoon meeting.

House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington also argued Thursday that Trump is pursuing sizable savings outside of the reconciliation process.

"He declared war on fraud," Arrington said. "One million dollars every minute of every hour of every day for a year is what is leaking in fraud out of the people's government, and he has a whole-of-government attack on that-over $500 billion a year in fraud."

Arrington also argued that the boost in defense funding should be uncontroversial.

"We are using reconciliation to just give baseline readiness-not Star Wars and Golden Dome and transformative modernization of the military, just the bombs, bullets, and battlefield readiness for our men and women in uniform to finish the fight successfully and return home safely-that's it," he said. He made similar arguments about the need to ensure food security and confidence in U.S. elections.

House leaders reportedly have also suggested that party priorities left out of this package can be addressed in a fourth reconciliation bill.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the budget panel, slammed the GOP plan for ignoring voters' concerns.

"Now, you might think, given that the top issue in the 2024 election was affordability, and that the top issue today is affordability, you might think the majority would want to spend time in a reconciliation bill addressing the No. 1 issue on voters' minds," he said. "I can tell you, 47 pages in their bill, 6,560 words, and not one word on bringing down costs for the American people. Not one word. Instead, we have tens of billions of dollars for the most unpopular war in American history. So, over the last 18 months, we have seen where Republicans' priorities are: trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires, tens of billions of dollars for war, and absolutely nothing for the American people."

What's next: The Budget Committee action tees up a floor vote expected to come next week before lawmakers are scheduled to head out for their August recess. House Republican leaders may still have work to do to get buy-in from deficit hawks. And the reconciliation blueprint also faces opposition in the Senate, where defense hawks will want more military funding and fiscal conservatives will want to see spending offset.

The House agenda for next week reportedly also could include another attempt at passing the annual defense policy bill and a GOP effort to pass a stopgap spending bill, potentially extending federal funding past the November elections to avert the possibility of a government shutdown when the current fiscal year ends on September 30.

The bottom line: Republican leaders are racing to enact their plans, with little time left before an August break and the November midterms. It's not clear yet if they can forge consensus among their members.

GOP Leaders Forced to Pull Veterans Benefits Bill

A sweeping veterans' benefits bill was pulled from the House floor on Thursday before it could be brought to a vote.

The Take Care of America's Veterans Act includes more than 60 individual measures, most of which have received broad support from veterans' groups. But the bill would cut some existing benefits to pay for the expansion of other benefits, and those cuts have sparked fierce debate.

In one popular policy change included in the bill under the Major Richard Star Act, veterans would be allowed to collect both retirement and injury benefits, without offsets. To cover the estimated cost of $13 billion over 10 years, coverage for some common ailments, including tinnitus and sleep apnea, would be dropped.

Lawmakers debated the bill for more than an hour before it was pulled, with some members reportedly snapping at each other on the House floor. Blaming "misinformation" about the bill for the conflict, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the legislation probably won't be brought back for "several more weeks" as leaders consider the next steps.

Democrats call for alternative funding: In an op-ed published by Fox News Wednesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Mark Takano, the senior Democrats on their respective Veterans' Affairs Committees, criticized the plan to cut benefits for tinnitus and sleep apnea.

"The Republican insistence on offsetting new investments in veterans is both absurd and cruel," the Democrats wrote. "The cost of war includes the human cost of caring for our veterans. We make a promise to care for these men and women after their service, and a great nation keeps its promises."

Blumenthal and Takano noted that Republicans have been inconsistent in their use of offsets to cover the cost of legislation. "For instance, they spent $3.4 trillion to deliver tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, with no regard to offsetting those costs," they wrote. "Despite this reality, Republicans claim the only viable path forward for the Take Care of America's Veterans Act is enacting unprecedented cuts to disabled veterans' benefits. We are here to say that is simply not true."

Blumenthal and Takano said the Pentagon is sitting on nearly $100 billion that is "unobligated and unspent" from the massive tax bill Republicans passed last summer. "A small portion of those funds could easily be redirected to cover the human costs of war reflected in the Take Care of America's Veterans Act."

Alternatively, Republicans could restore the 39.6% top tax rate for the top 0.1%, up from the 37% rate created in the tax bill. That move, which would affect only those earning more than $25 million a year, would be enough to pay for the new benefit, Blumenthal and Takano said.

While offering no specific funding proposals, Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew seemed to agree with the criticism of the funding plan. The veterans bill "has good provisions, but paying for them by reducing disability compensation for veterans with service-related health issues is the wrong approach," Van Drew said, per The Hill. "We can, and must, do better."

Chart of the Day: Trump's Disaster Request Denials

President Trump is taking longer than any other president to approve requests for disaster declarations - and is denying requests from Democratic states more frequently, according to a new analysis by David A. Lieb and M.K. Wildeman of the Associated Press.

Trump has reportedly approved about 65 requests for major disaster declarations. He has denied more than two dozen others, meaning that he has turned down a greater percentage of requests than any president dating back to 1989, when a new law established the legal process for presidential disaster declarations.

Trump's denials have been skewed against blue states. "Trump has approved 80% of the disaster requests from Republican governors but only about 60% from Democratic governors," Lieb and Wildeman report, citing FEMA data. "Trump has approved more than three-fourths of the requests from states that voted for him in the 2024 election but less than half the requests from states that did not."

A White House spokesperson said in a statement to the Associated Press that "there is no politicization to the President's decisions on disaster relief."

Read more at the Associated Press, including details about potential changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that would place greater responsibility for disaster response on states and could reduce the number of disaster declarations and the amount the federal government pays out.

 

AP disaster declarations

Quote of the Day

"I love the idea of DOGE. But what I don't love is the idea of DOGE shit that we're picking up because people did it wrong."

− Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, grilling Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought Thursday during a hearing held by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Tillis asked Vought to identify specific savings that had been claimed by DOGE, the ill-fated cost-cutting effort initially led by Elon Musk. Although he was not directly involved in DOGE operations, Vought claimed that the project generated $160 billion in savings. Nonpartisan experts have estimated far smaller savings, with some concluding that DOGE's chaotic approach actually cost the federal government money in the end.

Tillis lectured Vought on how cost-cutting works in the private sector before asking him for a written analysis explaining how at least one government agency saved money through DOGE. "Because right now, I'm picking up a lot of bags of - people, some of the most experienced people leaving, scientists leaving the [National Institutes of Health], these random, 'You were fired. Oh, I'm sorry, you weren't. Wrong email address,'" Tillis added. "All that stuff is amateurish stuff that would have gotten me fired in my job at Pricewaterhouse in a week."

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