FIVE-ALARM FIRE: The House Freedom Caucus’ Extreme Budget Proposal Raises Costs for Families

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus has made their priorities clear: imposing devastating cuts to public safety and increasing costs for working- and middle-class families, all to protect and extend tax breaks skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. In fact, their tax cuts would be so expensive that their deep and harmful cuts would not reduce the deficit.

That’s in sharp contrast with the President’s Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.

Combined with other commitments extreme MAGA House Republicans have already made, the extreme Freedom Caucus proposal will be a disaster for families in at least five key ways: endangering public safety, raising costs for families, shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and undermining American workers, weakening national security, and hurting seniors.

Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that Congressional Republicans’ budget math doesn’t add up. CBO found that—in order to meet Congressional Republicans’ stated commitment to balancing the budget in 10 years without raising taxes on the wealthy or corporations, and without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense, and some veterans’ benefits—Congressional Republicans would need to eliminate everything in the rest of the Federal budget.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal will be a five-alarm fire for families—including by raising costs. Unlike extreme MAGA Republicans in the House who are focused on repealing the Inflation Reduction Act—which would raise costs on everything from health insurance, to prescription drugs, to utility bills—President Biden is focused on lowering everyday costs and giving working families more breathing room.

The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposals will:

• Make Health Care More Expensive: Extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have signed onto a bill to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. That will increase health care premiums by an average of $800 per year for nearly 15 million Americans.
  
• Increase Energy Costs.  The extreme MAGA House Republicans would eliminate a law that will lower utility bills for American families by hundreds of dollars per year. Their plans would deny Americans critical savings on electric vehicles, energy-efficient windows, solar panels, and more.
  
• Make College More Expensive. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would not only eliminate Pell Grants altogether for 80,000 students, it would also reduce the maximum award by nearly $1,000 for the remaining 6.6 million students who receive Pell Grants—making it harder for them to attend and afford college.
  
• Eliminate Preschool and Child Care Slots. The extreme MAGA Republican House Freedom Caucus proposal would mean 200,000 children lose access to Head Start slots and 100,000 children lose access to child care—undermining our children’s education and making it more difficult for parents to join the workforce and contribute to our economy.
  
• Strip Medicaid Coverage and Food Assistance from Millions of People. Extreme MAGA Republicans want to impose failed policies that take Medicaid coverage away from people who fail to meet bureaucratic work reporting requirements. When it was tried, this policy led to nearly 1 in 4 losing Medicaid coverage – including working people and people with disabilities, caused uninsured rates to spike and led people to go without needed care, and failed to increase employment. Their proposals also put food assistance at risk for millions of older people and parents, and would mean 1.2 million women, infants, and children would lose vital nutrition assistance through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), significantly increasing child poverty and hunger.

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