Following the May 14 House Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Agriculture committees’ markups of their reconciliation bills, the House Budget committee late last week combined the contributions of all committees to create a full reconciliation bill and worked to move it to the House floor for a vote. By Friday, that effort appeared to stall due to objections from Budget Committee members Ralph Norman (R-SC), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Chip Roy (R-TX) and Andrew Clyde (R-GA). These members and others in the House Freedom Caucus negotiated with Speaker Johnson and Republican leadership over the weekend. The committee reconvened late Sunday, May 18; the bill advanced out of the Committee by a vote of 17-16. The 4 members that raised objections on Friday voted “present,” lowering the threshold for the bill to advance and demonstrating that disagreements about the policies remain. These holdouts are concerned that the bill does not cut spending enough. Among their demands are that Medicaid work requirements be implemented earlier — currently they are not slated to start until 2029; it sounds like 2027 is being discussed now. They also are still pushing for an FMAP cut, likely for the expansion population –so far, the White House is pushing back on that policy. They also want an earlier end date to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) clean energy tax credits. Representative Roy also expressed concern about the 10-year moratorium on state and local regulation of artificial intelligence, a concern we share. As of now, still contained in the package: all of the threats to Medicaid outlined in LeadingAge’s May 13 letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee. We are closely monitoring upcoming activities as one of the points of division regarding the package’s advancement is a desire for deeper Medicaid cuts. We are also concerned regarding threats to the nonprofit sector include potential Treasury Department targeting of certain organizations’ tax-exempt status and a significant boost in tax on private foundations’ net investment income, explained here. The next step is the House Rules Committee; a hearing has been noticed for 1 AM on Wednesday, May 21 – the absolute earliest they can hold the vote and still abide by House rules. The bill will change — negotiations continue as to how much and what policies. Speaker Johnson is still aiming to vote before Memorial Day and says he will keep the House in session if the vote has not happened by the end of the day Friday May 23. The House floor vote could be as soon as Wednesday the 21, but more likely to be Thursday the 22 or Friday the 23.