What’s in the Trump Policy Bill?

Briefing|What’s in the Trump Policy Bill?

The Senate is still debating a key part of President Trump’s domestic agenda this morning — what he has called his big, beautiful bill. Senators are racing to pass it before the July 4 deadline.

By now, you have probably heard two things about the proposal. First, it would cut taxes in a way that would largely benefit the wealthiest Americans. Second, to recoup some of that lost revenue, it would cut health care programs, particularly Medicaid, and would leave nearly 12 million more Americans uninsured over 10 years.

Those parts are important, but they are far from the only elements in the sprawling 940-page bill. The legislation also touches on food stamps, clean energy, mass deportations, student loans, military spending and more. Today, I’ll explain some of those less discussed provisions.

The other pieces

Because this bill is foremost about the federal budget, it goes through a special procedure — called reconciliation — that lets the Senate pass it with a simple majority, no filibuster allowed. Republican lawmakers have therefore treated this as a rare opportunity to accomplish a bunch of different priorities.

Food stamp cuts: The bill would cut SNAP, the food aid program that 40 million people use, by about 20 percent. It would make work requirements stricter and ask states to pick up more of the cost. The work requirements alone would likely eliminate millions of people from SNAP’s rolls. Millions of others would likely have their benefits reduced. And depending on how states react to the cuts, those reductions could end up being even steeper.

Supporters argue that these measures are needed to save money and to reduce what they see as Americans’ dependence on government programs. Critics of the cuts say that they will translate to more hunger and poverty, disproportionately hurting the working class.