Despite their earlier differences, the House passed the Senate’s budget on October 26th, completing the final budgetary step required before beginning the actual tax reform process. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced that we can expect to see the House’s tax reform legislation as early as November 1st with a full House vote possible by Thanksgiving. The House-passed legislation would then move on to the Senate for consideration. Read the full article here.
As a reminder, the original Senate budget resolution, which sets the stage for tax reform legislation, allowed for the legislation to create a 1.5 trillion dollar funding deficit while the House budget was deficit neutral. Normally, the two chambers would meet to negotiate a middle ground through a process known as conferencing. However, the House opted to skip the conferencing committee process and pass the Senate budget resolution in order to expedite the legislative process.
While reports are currently that Medicaid will not be directly affected by tax reform, a full review of the legislation and the impact on the budget will have to be understood to assess future cost savings that may be put on the Medicaid program, particularly to pay for the 1.5. trillion deficit permitted by the legislation. More information on what is in the budget resolution, how it links to tax reform, and how all of this involves Medicaid is available here.
Once ANCOR has reviewed the tax legislation we will share with members what its implications may be for Medicaid and the IDD community. ANCOR will continue to report on what we are hearing about possible healthcare reform as well. Right now our sources share that after tax reform there may be some appetite to revisit the Graham-Cassidy proposal in January 2018 under regular order. Sarah Meek, ANCOR’s Director of Legislative Affairs, is here to answer any questions you may have! She can be reached at [email protected]
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