Sneaky additions shock Republicans debating their own bill: 'First we're hearing'

Top House Republicans were caught off guard by some of the provisions in their massive budget bill as the process to get it ready for passage began, Politico reported on Wednesday.

The bill, which is meant to gather up all of President Donald Trump's priorities on tax cuts, energy deregulation, and border security, is jam-packed with a number of controversial proposals, like $600 billion in cuts to Medicaid, all while projected to massively increase the federal deficit to permanently extend tax cuts that flow mostly to the rich.

Senior officials on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the report, were "16 hours into a nearly 27-hour markup when it became clear that top Republicans on the panel weren’t clear on what key Medicaid provisions in the legislation they were actively debating would actually do."

Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers in swing districts expressed confusion about exactly how the proposed Medicaid work requirements would function, and a number of them were particularly alarmed at a proposal that would impose cost-sharing on some Medicaid recipients, forcing them to pay for the coverage.

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Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) bluntly told reporters that “There were some items in there that, it was the first time we were hearing of them.”

Others were taken aback at the provision that people who fail to meet the planned Medicaid work requirements would also become ineligible for subsidies on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges. Democrats on the committee seized on this provision to point out that the GOP's plan inherently assumes millions of people would be thrown off of their insurance, and that if they didn't deny those subsidies, the work requirements wouldn't even save the government any money because people disqualified from Medicaid could then get subsidized health plans on the exchanges.

All of this comes at a moment when a number of Republicans from various wings of the party are already raising objections to key elements of the proposal.

For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has repeatedly drawn a line in the sand about cuts to Medicaid, which are core to how the bill implements some of its cost offsets. And multiple Republicans from New York State, who have demanded full repeal of the state and local tax deduction cap (SALT) after Republicans themselves instituted it in 2018, are balking at the significantly watered down solution on that policy in the bill.

Democrats are going on offense amid all these problems, with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) posting on X, “They rushed this cruel bill to markup in the dead of night without even understanding what they were voting on. The American people deserve leaders who will fight for them, not destroy their lives to hand billionaires another round of tax cuts.”