How the House reconciliation bill would impact Lancaster, southern York counties

• By Jaxon White/LNP | LancasterOnline

Republicans narrowly advanced their tax and spending cuts budget bill through the House earlier this week after President Donald Trump pressured a few holdouts into letting the legislation pass.

Much of what’s inside the more than 1,000-page bill would significantly change how the federal government touches the residents of Pennsylvania’s 11th congressional district, which covers Lancaster and southern York counties.

The district’s representative in the House, Lloyd Smucker, has leveraged his seats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and the Budget Committee, which he vice-chairs, to play an outsized role as negotiations have continued in recent months.

But since issuing a press release after voting for the bill Thursday morning, Smucker has said little about the bill. His office did not respond to a request for an interview on Friday.

The bill faces heavy scrutiny from Senate Republicans and will likely change significantly over the next few months before it can reach Trump’s desk.

But here is what we know about how some 11th District residents could be impacted by the reconciliation bill passed by the House:

Tax cuts

Some of the proposed tax cuts are designed to make good on many of Trump’s campaign promises last year, like the extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay through 2028.

Raising the state-and-local-tax (SALT) deduction ceiling to $40,000 from $10,000 is also included in the bill, which the nonpartisan D.C.-based nonprofit Tax Foundation found would primarily benefit high-income Americans.

The bill includes more tax deductions, including a bonus $4,000 deduction for Americans 65 and older to offset taxes on their Social Security benefits. In the 11th District, according to the Social Security Administration, there are more than 141,000 beneficiaries who are older than 65.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found this week that the tax changes will cost the government $4.3 trillion over the next decade.

The budget bill calls for spending cuts to offset that lost revenue. But the analysts who produce the Penn Wharton Budget Model found those changes would only cut about $1.7 trillion over ten years.

Smucker, who repeatedly said he would not support a bill that expanded the spending deficit, told LNP | LancasterOnline last week that the House GOP bill would generate about $2.5 trillion in economic growth in that period, effectively offsetting the loss of revenue to the bill’s tax cuts.

However, on May 22, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation predicted the legislation’s impact on the economy would only generate about $0.1 trillion in federal revenue.

Medicaid and Obamacare

There are roughly 135,000 Medicaid enrollees in the 11th District, according to California-based health research group KFF. Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimate some 13,600 people in the district are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, though that was before last-minute revisions altered the proposal.

The lost coverage is largely due to spending cuts and the budget bill requiring Medicaid recipients under 65 without dependents to confirm they work at least 80 hours per month. The start of the work requirement would begin at the end of next year.

Similarly, changes to the Affordable Care Act and not extending the enhanced premium tax credits are estimated to push millions off their insurance.

In Smucker’s district, there are roughly 22,000 Obamacare Marketplace enrollees, according to KFF. Data on how many are enrolled with advanced premium tax credits was not available.

Food stamps

The Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service estimates that 11%, or some 297,000, of households in District 11 participate in SNAP.

How many people nationwide under the GOP proposal stand to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is unclear, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO said spending on SNAP would be reduced by $92 billion between 2025 and 2034, and roughly 3.2 million fewer people would participate in the program, of which 1 million people would be due to a work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents under the age of 65.

Higher education

The nonprofit Student Borrower Protection Center found there are roughly 130,000 student loan borrowers in Smucker’s district, with an average balance of more than $36,000.

Roughly 10,100 borrowers in the district, according to the Protection Center, are enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, a Biden-era income-driven repayment method. That plan would be scrapped under the GOP’s spending bill.

Eliminating the subsidized and income-driven loan repayment plans, capping the amount students can borrow to pay for college, and restricting Pell Grant eligibility would reduce government spending by about $350 billion, Wharton predicted.