U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va, is backing a continuation of the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
Capito, who spoke with West Virginia reporters about the ongoing budget reconciliation bill during her weekly media briefing, also addressed potential cuts to Medicaid and how that could impact residents of West Virginia.
A draft version of the budget reconciliation package was released by House Republicans Sunday. House Speaker Mike Johnson has set a Memorial Day deadline to pass the budget bill, which is expected to contain tax breaks and spending cuts sought by President Donald Trump.
Capito said a failure by Congress to extended the 2017 Trump tax cuts would mean higher taxes for all working Americans.
“We are having active discussions on the reconciliation package,” Capito said. “It is a two-fold exercise where basically it is extending the tax relief from 2017. This means every single person will not have their taxes going up. Businesses will have the opportunity to expense more rapidly and we want to do a pro growth policy here that we saw in the late teens under President Trump the first time.”
At the same time, Capito said lawmakers also must address the $37 trillion dollar debt America is facing in the budget bill.
“Unless we bend the curve on it future generations are really going to suffer here,” Capito said of the national debt. “One of the ways we can really do this through reconciliation is to look at mandatory spending, and Medicaid is one of those.”
However, potential cuts to Medicaid has become a political issue. The draft budget bill released by House Republicans Sunday includes near $880 billion in spending reductions.
Capito said she does not want to see any West Virginians lose their Medicaid benefits.
“I’ve talked at length to West Virginians, to the hospitals, to the nursing homes and to the state Medicaid office to understand how fully this can impact West Virginia,” Capito said. “I’m not interested in cutting anybody’s benefits. But I am interested in making sure that we get rid of the fraud, that we make sure that we have a work requirement, that we make sure that we have accountability and those are money savings in Medicaid. At its current pace, it (Medicaid) will just far exceed what we can afford. And so I’m going to be very cautious here.”
Capito said 28 percent of low-income West Virginians currently depend upon Medicaid for their health care needs.
“I want to make sure we are able to deliver that to the folks it was intended for and qualify,” she said.
Majority Republicans who control the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate say they want to root out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid while also backing new work and eligibility requirements for the federal benefits. However, Democrats argue that millions of Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage if the Republican plan passes.
The Associated Press reported Monday that a preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found the draft proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over a decade.