Analyzing the GOP’s Budget Reconciliation Bill

Earlier this year, we released a report with the faith-based anti-poverty group Repairers of the Breach and the Economic Policy Institute on how the GOP budget bill and other Trump administration policies are harming ordinary people. We’re updating it periodically with new fact sheets like this one. Read the original report and see the other fact sheets here.

On May 22, 2025, the House of Representatives voted 215-214 to pass a budget reconciliation mega-bill that now goes to the Senate. This bill includes huge tax giveaways for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations and massive funding increases for the military and mass deportations while slashing health care and food assistance.

Health Care

• New work reporting requirements for enrollees are expected to result in at least 8.6 million losing their health insurance — without actually promoting employment. Most Medicaid enrollees already work, and those who do not are often caring for family members, have a disability, or attending school. The bill would also require enrollees to “re-prove” their eligibility, likely resulting in many people losing health insurance due to paperwork errors or processing delays.
• Insurance premium tax credits: The bill lets tax credits that help families afford their insurance premiums expire, which would result in an estimated 4 million Americans losing their health insurance.
• Penalties for immigrant health care: The federal government would cut Medicaid funds for states that use state funds—not federal dollars—to cover undocumented immigrants, likely leading to many states taking this coverage away. 
• Total expected increase in people without health insurance: 13.7 million

Food Assistance

• Forcing states to cut back on or end food assistance. The bill pushes SNAP benefit costs onto states for the first time since the program’s creation during the Great Depression. This is expected to force states to cut back on the assistance hungry Americans can receive, narrow eligibility for assistance, or end their food aid programs entirely.
• New work reporting requirements for people who receive SNAP food assistance: Similar to Medicaid reporting requirements, this new red tape would have little effect on the number of people working, but would hurt working families, including children. 
• Total people the bill would put at risk of losing SNAP: 11 million.

Tax Giveaways to the Wealthy and Large Corporations 

The House Ways and Means Committee has released its plan for extending expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law along with other tax changes. The overwhelming majority of these benefits from this plan would flow to the wealthiest households and biggest companies. Select examples: 

• Income tax rates: the richest 1% would receive 28% of income tax cut benefits. Families making over $1 million would get cuts worth about $90,000 while the poorest 20% would receive just $90 on average.  
• Estate tax: The amount of wealth exempted from the estate tax would rise to $30 million per couple, up from just $14 million before the 2017 tax reform. The heirs of the ultra-wealthy would enjoy a tax savings of $6.4 million while 99.8% of American families would not get a single penny from this tax cut.
• Corporate taxes: The House plan keeps the corporate tax rate at 21%, a drastic reduction from the pre-2018 rate of 35%. In addition, the plan includes a raft of corporate tax breaks that will cost more than a half a trillion dollars in coming years. By one estimate, less than 8% of the benefits of corporate tax breaks flow to non-white households. 
• Child Tax Credit: The current CTC would temporarily increase from $2,000 to $2,500 per child for four years — an amount slightly below its inflation-adjusted value at the start of 2018. But millions of children whose parents earn too little to receive the full CTC would be denied this benefit. And 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens would lose access to this credit under new restrictions requiring both parents to have Social Security numbers.

Pentagon Funding

• President Trump is requesting a record-high $1.011 trillion “defense” budget for FY 2026. Because regular appropriations bills require a 60-vote majority in the Senate (whereas only a straight majority is required in the reconciliation process), the administration is maneuvering to push more than $100 billion of this Pentagon budget through the reconciliation bill. 
• One component of the Pentagon funding in the reconciliation bill is the Golden Dome, a $25 billion project to build a nation-wide missile defense system that can defend against hypersonic missiles/nuclear warheads. This project is economically and physically impossible and would only drain more money from vital social programs to enrich wealthy Pentagon contractors,  including Elon Musk.

Mass Deportations and Detentions

• Detention: The bill provides $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This would be a 364% increase on an annual basis that would primarily benefit private companies contracted to build and run detention facilities.
• Arrests: The bill includes $27 billion toward ICE enforcement and deportation operations, strengthening its ability to expand community arrests.
• Border: The bill invests $51.6 billion into expanded border wall construction—a massive sum that would be better spent on meeting human needs.

Additional resources: 

Americans for Tax Fairness

Congressional Progressive Caucus Center