Lisa Desjardins:
Reminder, Republicans do control all three branches of government. They don’t have 60 votes in the Senate yet.
But Republicans over the weekend in the House did propose an extension of government funding. It would extend funding for six months. And it is not a so-called clean bill. It is a bill that has some very interesting specifics to it. So I want to look at those.
Number one, at the top, this would cut $13 billion in non-defense. Relative to all of government spending, that’s not a lot. But it’s a statement from Republicans that that’s where they want to cut. It would increase $6 billion for defense spending. It would also increase $500 million for the Women, Infants, and Children’s program. That helps mothers, especially with babies.
Now, in this bill, there is also something missing. There is no fix for a Medicare doctor rate cut. We haven’t talked about this a lot. This was expected to be solved in this bill. But, on January 1, Medicare doctors saw their reimbursement rate cut by almost 3 percent.
This is something that was supposed to be taken care of before now, supposed to be in this bill, and it is not. This is a real problem for those doctors. In addition, one more item in this that is divisive, this would increase spending that ICE can use for deportations, detentions, and that’s something Republicans like and Democrats do not.
