Sponsors (3)
The bill preserves committees' ability to consider and recommend changes protecting Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, but at the cost of restricting a fast-track budget tool that could be used to pursue entitlement reform and deficit reduction.
Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid beneficiaries, and state governments: congressional reconciliation cannot be used to bar committee recommendations to cut or alter Medicare or Medicaid, preserving committees' ability to consider beneficiary protections and program changes.
Taxpayers: this restriction could make it harder to enact budget-focused reforms to entitlement spending via reconciliation, potentially complicating deficit reduction and broader fiscal consolidation efforts.
Congress/Committees and taxpayers: limits the majority party's ability to use reconciliation as a fast-track tool to quickly block or force major changes to Medicare and Medicaid via committee bans, reducing a commonly used legislative lever.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Changes reconciliation rules to explicitly prevent prohibiting committee recommendations related to Medicare and Medicaid.
Official title: Prohibit changes to Medicare and Medicaid in reconciliation.
Introduced May 22, 2025 by John F. Reed · Last progress May 22, 2025
Amends the Congressional Budget Act's rule about budget reconciliation to explicitly prevent a reconciliation concurrent resolution from forbidding committees from making recommendations "with respect to" Medicare (Title XVIII) and Medicaid (Title XIX), adding those programs alongside Social Security old-age benefits. The change is a substantive expansion of the carve-outs in the statute and affects how reconciliation instructions may treat major health programs.