May 22, 2025 08:39 AM UTC

House Republicans Narrowly Pass Big Bad Budget Bill in Dead of Night

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: America’s Most Vulnerable Republican™ Rep. Gabe Evans hugs the big bad budget bill he helped craft with both loving arms:

U.S. Congressman Gabe Evans today issued the following statement after voting to pass the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” legislation that delivers resources to secure the border, invests in national defense, unleashes domestic energy, avoids the largest tax cut in American history, and strengthens Medicaid for the most vulnerable.

“This pro-family, pro-America bill isn’t just good policy, it follows through on promises made to working families. As a father, Army combat veteran, and former cop, I fight every day to make Colorado a better place to live, work, and raise a family, and that’s exactly what this legislation does,” said Congressman Gabe Evans.

Liberal activist group ProgressNow Colorado begs to differ:

“Last night’s vote was the first real test of Gabe Evans’ integrity, and he blew it,” said ProgressNow Colorado executive director Sara Loflin. “For months, residents of Evans’ district begged him to step back from the brink and reject his colleagues’ plans to throw millions of Americans off the Medicaid rolls to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Because of Gabe Evans’ vote, unless the Senate intervenes to stop this madness, thousands of residents of the Eighth Congressional District will lose their health coverage. Of those thousands, some will not fit Evans’ cheap stereotypes, and those people will suffer so the wealthiest Americans can have more tax cuts. Some of them will die.”

“Gabe Evans’ decisive vote to slash essential needs like health care and food assistance in order to give even more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans will define what’s left of Evans’ career in public office,” said Loflin. “Gabe Evans chose Trump over Thornton, Musk over Milliken, and greed over Greeley. Evans has betrayed the trust of the voters who narrowly elected him to Congress, many of whom likely had no idea they were voting to cut funding to their own communities. There is no going back now. Before last night, the task was persuasion. From today until Election Day 2026, the job is to hold Gabe Evans accountable for what he did last night.”

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While you were sleeping — literally — House Republicans rammed through their awful, no good budget and immigration bill that includes massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (the largest such cuts in U.S. history); a scary way for the Trump administration to ignore the judicial branch; and likely significant funding cuts to Medicare as well.

Why? So rich people can keep getting tax breaks at a cost of trillions of dollars added to the national debt.

From The Washington Post:

House Republicans approved President Donald Trump’s sprawling tax and immigration agenda Thursday morning, sending to the Senate legislation that the GOP hopes will transform the federal government and the economy and power the White House’s drive to deport immigrants and build up the military.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, as the measure is formally known, extends trillions of dollars in tax cuts from his first term along with new campaign promises — including no taxes on tips and overtime wages — and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.

But the legislation, which passed 215-214-1 after marathon talks, carries a hefty price tag. The latest projection from the Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan bookkeeper, showed it will add $2.4 trillion over 10 years to the national debt, which already exceeds $36 trillion.

To offset the cost, the measure would slash spending on social safety net programs by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Even then, the mammoth legislation could also force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next decade to keep the national deficit within legal limits, unless Congress later adjusts the limits. The legislation could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years, the CBO projected.

Colorado’s delegation voted along party lines, with all Democrats in opposition and all Republicans voting in support.

The Republican votes include ‘YAYs’ from Rep. Jeff “Bread Sandwich” Hurd (R-Grand Junction) and Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton). Hurd’s vote comes about a month after he pledged, along with 11 other Congressional Republicans, that he would not vote for a budget bill that made big cuts to Medicaid. This was then, via CPR:

“When I was campaigning for Congress, one of the top issues was rural health care, and that’s something that matters to me personally, but it’s also important to the people of Colorado’s third congressional district,” Hurd said in an interview Wednesday with CPR News.

He said he and the others who signed the letter wanted to let leadership of both the House and House Energy and Commerce Committee “know that protecting Medicaid services for those who need it most is a critical priority for us. And that was what was animating my joining in this letter.”

Welp, nevermind then!

The Senate still needs to approve the bill before it can reach the White House, and several Republican Senators have thus far voiced strong opposition to Medicaid cuts. But then again, so did Hurd and 11 other House Republicans…until they didn’t.

We will update this post with more news and reactions.