Strategic Republican Delay Of Deepest Service Cuts?

By Benjamin J. Hulac
Washington Correspondent For NJ Spotlight News

WASHINGTON — When they wrote President Trump’s signature legislative initiative, Republicans in Congress front-loaded tax breaks for people and delayed cuts to health and food programs until after the 2026 midterm elections — a staggered timeline that may insulate them against electoral blowback.

The recently passed law contains a series of provisions for individuals that take effect this year, including deductions for seniors, interest on car loans and steps to exclude federal tax on overtime or tips. Those provisions will each apply to the 2025 tax year.

Yet two of the most significant elements of the law — deep cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income and disabled citizens, and the country’s primary nutritional aid program — will not kick in until after Election Day next year.

The spaced-out pattern is deliberate, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

A matter of timing?

“They think that they’re going to be able to get away with it,” Watson Coleman said. “But that’s going to be our responsibility to hold their feet to the fire to not only tell people what these cuts represent, but to let them know how they have been strategically timed right after the midterm elections so that they can try to hold on to power.”

Senate inches toward funding clawback but may spare HIV/AIDS programMore than a year from the 2026 elections, two twin themes — the sweeping domestic policy law and how the Trump administration puts it into effect — are shaping the outlook for those elections on Capitol Hill.

Democrats view the law as a political liability, though most Republicans, including all three who represent New Jersey in Washington, stand by their votes.

Midterm elections are often setbacks for the sitting president’s political party.

From a ‘thumpin’ to a ‘shellacking’

In 2010, Republicans drubbed Democrats in an election then-President Barack Obama called a “shellacking.” In 2006, Republicans suffered what George W. Bush, the president then, dubbed a “thumpin’.”

In the 22 midterm elections between 1934 and 2018, the president’s party has lost on average 28 seats in the House, according to John T. Woolley of the American Presidency Project, which is housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 2022, that pattern held. Democrats lost 10 House seats.

‘Women, small children, disabled persons, they will not lose anything, I’m confident, but I think the delay gives us further time to make sure that’s the case.’ — Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th)

One political warning flare rocketed up Tuesday, when Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, introduced a bill to roll back significant changes to Medicaid two weeks after he, every other Senate Republican and all but two House Republicans voted to cut more than $1 trillion from the program.

That cut will be parsed out over the next decade, as will a cut of $285 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the country’s largest food aid system.

Less federal money for Medicaid and SNAP, which states nationwide implement, could cost New Jersey hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Medicaid, SNAP

The new law tightened work requirements for people enrolled in Medicaid and those in SNAP.

“For the record, not for seniors, not for kids, not for pregnant women, not for young families,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Cuts to the national health-insurance and food systems were delayed so states could be ready, Republicans said.

“The mindset was just to get people really used to it, to get the states used to having to be more efficient and for the system to work better,” Van Drew said.

‘The purpose of it is to lie to people, hope that people don’t look at the bill….’ — Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th)

Out of the hundreds of new provisions in the law, some will kick in this year, including phaseouts of tax credits for electric vehicles (expiring Sept. 30), rooftop solar panels (expiring Dec. 31) and residential energy upgrades (expiring Dec. 31).

Also lapsing are subsidies for the 2010 health-care law known as Obamacare, which will expire at the end of this year unless Congress intervenes.

That lapse, plus cuts to Medicaid, could leave about 17 million people without health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“Some things are kicking in before the midterms,” Van Drew said. “For example the credits for additional Obamacare, for the premium coverage, that’s before the election.”

What Republicans say

Criticism of cuts to Medicaid and worries about work requirements are overblown, Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

“I think there’s a great deal of hyperbole about what the ‘workfare’ requirements will do. I think they’re good.”

Republicans exult after Congress passes Trump’s megabillBut delaying the cuts will ensure these changes are administered smoothly, he said.

“Women, small children, disabled persons, they will not lose anything,” Smith said. “I’m confident, but I think the delay gives us further time to make sure that’s the case.”

In a speech Wednesday in northeastern Pennsylvania, Vice President JD Vance touted the new law as a boon to average workers.

The domestic economy will “take off in a rocket ship with good policy coming from D.C.,” Vance predicted, talking up economic provisions of the law.

Starting in 2025, the standard tax deduction will increase to $750 for individuals and $1,500 for couples. The law also raised the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200, indexing that number to increase with inflation. Neither are scheduled to expire.

Yet some of the new tax provisions for people — no federal tax on tips, no federal tax on overtime, deduction of interest on car loans, a more generous deduction for seniors — will arrive this tax year but expire in 2028 and are capped at certain levels.

The more generous state and local tax deduction, a key New Jersey issue, is also temporary — expiring in 2029.

“Those are both limited in duration and in amount,” Watson Coleman said.

Watson Coleman said Republicans deceived the public about what’s in the law.

“The purpose of it is to lie to people, hope that people don’t look at the bill, don’t listen to people who really want to share the information that really exists,” she said. “That’s what that is. Nothing more, nothing less.”