How Biden set the stage for GOP budget cuts
Polygraph | Newsletter n°290 | 15 Feb 2025
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Trump’s legislative agenda takes shape
House Republicans just cleared the first hurdle to enacting Trump’s legislative agenda. On Thursday, the House Budget Committee approved a budget resolution that ramps up funding for the Pentagon and federal police agencies and sponsors a tax cut primarily for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
Republican leaders say the $4.8 trillion measure won’t balloon the national deficit because it will be offset (“paid for”) by reductions in federal spending. More likely: it won’t be fully paid for and will balloon the deficit. But there will be significant cuts to offset part of the cost.
The budget resolution tasks some congressional committees with cutting at least $1.5 trillion and gives others authority to increase the deficit by $4.8 trillion through spending and tax cuts.1 Budget resolutions only set spending and revenue targets — the specifics are formulated later in appropriations (funding) bills — but the resolution gives us a good idea about what the GOP has in mind. The largest proposed cut, aimed at the Energy and Commerce Committee, suggests they’re going after Medicaid. The proposed reduction for Agriculture suggests a massive cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps).
GOP’s proposed cuts (at least $1.5 trillion):
Agriculture: at least $230 billion
Education and Workforce: at least $330 billion
Energy and Commerce: at least $880 billion
Financial Services: at least $1 billion
Natural Resources: at least $1 billion
Oversight and Gov’t Reform: at least $50 billion
Transportation and Infrastructure: at least $10 billion
GOP’s proposed spending and tax cuts ($4.8 trillion):
Armed Services: $100 billion
Homeland Security: $90 billion
Judiciary: $110 billion
Ways and Means: $4.5 trillion*
*This is the amount the Ways and Means Committee is allowed to increase the deficit by extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and enacting several other tax cut proposals Trump pitched during the 2024 campaign. I’m not sure how the GOP arrived at $4.5 trillion, considering that the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts alone is $4.6 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
How much can Republicans get away with cutting? That’s the question congressional Republicans are asking themselves. They’re definitely serious about reducing spending (though not necessarily the deficit): While Republicans’ budget resolution outlines $1.5 trillion in cuts, it penalizes them if they fail to cut at least $2 trillion (now that’s dedication!). Any shortfall will be deducted from the $4.5 trillion allocated for tax cuts:
^Source: FY25 budget resolution, p. 40
But cutting $2 trillion in “mandatory spending” — which includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and income assistance programs like SNAP — is politically risky. Republicans argue they’re targeting waste, fraud, and abuse, but reducing the core functions of Medicaid and SNAP appear to be very much on the table. GOP leaders are already on the defensive about potential Medicaid cuts, and will face mounting opposition to proposed SNAP cuts, including from Republicans in battleground districts.
Still, the GOP seems committed to shrinking the welfare state, even if it means losing working-class votes and ultimately elections because of it. This sounds familiar.
How Biden set the stage for GOP budget cuts
The GOP’s budget resolution would have sparked greater public outcry if Biden hadn’t spent the last two years normalizing social welfare cuts. Expanded Medicaid coverage, enhanced SNAP benefits, and the student loan pause were all meant to be temporary — but they didn’t have to be. While Republicans are leading the current attack on the social safety net, the broader war on welfare is bipartisan.
1. Biden’s 2023 budget cut Medicaid, SNAP
Through the March 2020 Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the federal government greatly increased SNAP and Medicaid funding to states, on the condition that they provide additional food aid and refrain from kicking anyone off Medicaid as long as the public health emergency for COVID-19 remained in effect. Because these expansions were structured to continue automatically, it would take far more effort to stop them than to simply let them continue.
Biden’s 2023 budget stopped them.2 After urging its “swift passage,” Biden signed it into law on December 29, 2022, as the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, which was backed by all but one Democrat (Rep. Ocasio-Cortez). The final budget enacted by the Democratic trifecta should be infamous for two main reasons: First, two-thirds of the massive $1.7 trillion bill went to military and law enforcement. Second, it triggered historic reductions in food assistance and public health insurance coverage:
Medicaid: Division FF, Title V, Sec. 5131 lifted the prohibition on states kicking people off Medicaid in March 2023 and phased out additional funding for states.
SNAP: Division HH, Title IV, Section 503(b) eliminated additional SNAP benefits in February 2023 — which had kept 4.2 million people out of poverty — leaving recipients only about 60 days to brace for a drastic reduction in food aid.
Congress buried these cuts in a nearly 1,700-page bill passed over the holidays, leaving virtually no room for public debate.
Republicans had long pushed to end these incredibly impactful provisions; Democrats ultimately agreed to end them to pass a budget with $1.1 trillion for the military and law enforcement. In a floor speech promoting the legislation, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said it was “overflowing with very good news for our troops” and “for the Ukrainian brave fighters.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) cited the Pentagon’s desire for a $76 billion budget increase as justification for supporting the bill and opposing a full-year continuing resolution, which would have kept the Medicaid and SNAP provisions in place.
Democrats secured some welfare policies in return for agreeing to end the Medicaid and SNAP provisions, like a permanent 12-month Medicaid postpartum coverage provision (though states aren’t required to implement it) and a summer EBT program. However, the bill lacked an expanded child tax credit or even parity between military and non-military spending — major Democratic priorities for their final budget with control of Congress.
During the December 2022 negotiations of the 2023 budget bill, one Senate Republican aide remarked, “The question is: Can [Democratic leaders] get enough wins to take the political sting off allowing states to kick people off the [Medicaid] rolls?” The answer was no. The Medicaid and SNAP cuts triggered months of public backlash and damaging headlines for Biden and the Democrats. If their goal was to protect working-class well-being, they made a terrible deal — and paid for it politically.
Had the bill not included these rollbacks, Biden would have eliminated the expanded Medicaid and enhanced SNAP provisions anyway when he ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023.3
The GOP’s Medicaid and SNAP cuts vs. Biden’s
A leaked 50-page Republican budget document lays out a menu of options to cut SNAP, Medicaid, and other social safety net programs. Two proposals stand out for their combination of severity and likelihood:
GOP’s Medicaid cut: Eliminates the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, removing coverage for 13 million people. The GOP estimates this will reduce spending by $561 billion. (p. 20)
GOP’s SNAP cut: Reverses Biden’s 2021 benefit adjustment, reducing monthly benefits by $36 per person. The GOP estimates this will reduce spending by $274 billion. (p. 25)
These cuts would be devastating. But are they worse than those Biden recently enacted?
Biden’s Medicaid cut kicked over 25 million people off the program — nearly double the number who would lose coverage under the GOP proposal.
Biden’s SNAP cut slashed monthly benefits by $90 per person, on average — more than double the expected reduction from the Republican proposal.
2. Biden restarted student loans because he felt like it
Unlike most pandemic-era social programs, the SNAP boost and Medicaid expansion didn’t expire or run out of funding — they only ended because Biden chose to end them.4 The same goes for student loan payments. Biden never had to end the student loan repayment pause; he did so because he wanted to. This decision threw millions of borrowers into financial distress.
Why I miss the student loan pause
From March 2020 to August 2023, student loans were paused — no payments, no interest, no collections. No, it wasn’t debt cancellation — a promise Biden made, failed to enact, and eventually abandoned — but the pause was still good policy. Underrated, in my opinion. It freed up an average of $280 per month per borrower, saving the typical borrower about $13,500 over the 43-month pause. Those not in active repayment saved $9,350 in interest, on average. Because the pause was automatic and the majority of student loan debt is held by the government, it didn’t have the usual barriers that limit access to other social programs, such as means-testing, long application forms, bureaucracy, or eligible people being unaware of the policy in the first place. Interest on outstanding debt resumed in September 2023, and payments became due the following month.
Biden originally extended the student loan repayment pause on his first day in office. An accompanying White House statement read, “Too many Americans are struggling to pay for basic necessities and to provide for their families. They should not be forced to choose between paying their student loans and putting food on the table.”
When Biden extended the pause in January 2021, 24 million Americans faced food insecurity, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. By the time student loan payments were due again in October 2023, that number had risen to 28 million.
Saddling borrowers with a few hundred dollars in extra monthly expenses during a cost-of-living crisis had predictable consequences. According to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data, the number of borrowers struggling to pay their bills jumped from 47% in early 2023 to 61% by early 2024, an increase of about 6 million people. As the graph below illustrates, the student loan pause — combined with other social welfare programs like enhanced SNAP benefits and expanded Medicaid — greatly alleviated financial distress among borrowers. Now the student loan crisis is even worse than it was before the pandemic.
^Alt text for screen readers: Restarting student loan payments forced millions more borrowers into financial distress. This red line graph shows that before the repayment pause, 51% of borrowers had difficulty paying household bills. This figure dropped during the March 2020 through September 2023 pause. In 2024, the figure is 61%. Data: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Student loan repayments paused in March 2020, restarted in October 2023 (after CFPB collected its 2023 data).
Did Republicans really force Biden to restart student loan payments?
The predominant narrative is that Republicans forced Biden’s hand through the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) — the debt ceiling deal that seemingly locked in the return of student loan payments. However, as shown in the excerpt from the Act below, the FRA contained a significant loophole that Biden chose not to use.
^Source: Public Law 118-5, 137 Stat. 33-34 (2023).
The FRA only ended the current payment pause — it didn’t ban future ones. Subsection (c)(1) specifies that the “waivers and modifications” — a payment pause being one such modification — refer specifically to an October 12, 2022, federal rule that’s tied exclusively to the COVID-19 national emergency. Biden could have declared a new national emergency (perhaps justifying it on the grounds of the widely acknowledged cost-of-living crisis) and used it to pause payments again.5
The Biden administration itself admitted the FRA didn’t prevent future pauses. Per Politico: “[Officials] noted…that [the FRA] would not prevent the Education Department from pausing payments in response to future national emergencies.” Why didn’t the former president exploit this loophole?
*
Biden was always very keen on restarting student loan payments, one of his weirder personality defects. Back in December 2021, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A smooth transition back into repayment is a high priority for the administration.” The ensuing public backlash forced multiple postponements, but Biden never stopped pushing for payments to resume.
While Republicans took credit (I’d say blame) for forcing payments to resume via the FRA, the Biden administration had already made clear weeks before the FRA passed that it was going to restart student loans. Ahead of the October 2023 restart date, Biden was adamant that payments would resume on the first of the month, even if there was a government shutdown. About a year out from the 2024 election, Biden was telling tens of millions of borrowers to pay up.
Biden deserves credit for forgiving $189 billion in student loans. But total student debt still grew by over $72 billion from 2020 to 2024 ($1.566 trillion to $1.639 trillion). You read that right — despite Biden’s significant loan forgiveness, there’s more debt to repay now than when he took office. Student loans can be like that.
Conclusion
If you, like Biden, failed to enact the social welfare agenda you campaigned and won on in 2020, wouldn’t you have protected whatever remained of the COVID-19 welfare state to help people survive the cost-of-living crisis? Or would you have done what he did? Had Biden kept these policies in place, they’d be at the top of the GOP’s current target list. But Biden cut them first, further demoralizing the working class and leaving them with fewer resources to push back against the cuts ahead.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Abe B., Alan F., Amin, Andrew R., AT., BartB., BeepBoop, Ben, Bill S., Bob N., Brett S., Byron D., Chris, Chris G., Cole H., D. Kepler, Daniel M., David J., David S.,* David V.,* David M., Elizabeth R., Errol S., Foundart, Francis M., Frank R., Gary W., Gladwyn S., Graham P., Griffin R., Hunter S., Irene B., Isaac, James H., James N., Jcowens, Jennifer, Jennifer J., Jerry S., Joe R., John, John, John A., John K., John M., Jonathan S., Joseph B., Julia G., Katrina H., Kheng L., Lea S., Leah A., Leila CL., Linda B., Linda H., Lindsay, Lindsay S.,* Lora L., Mapraputa, Marie R., Mark L., Mary Z., Marty, Matthew H.,* Megan., Melanie B., Michael S., Mitchell P., Nick B., Noah K., Norbert H., Omar A., Omar D.,* Peter M., Phil, Philip L., Rosemary K., Sari G., Scarlet, Silversurfer, Soh, Springseep, TBE, Teddie G., Theresa A., Themadking, Tim C., Timbuk T., Tony L., Tony T., Victor S., Wayne H., William P.
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-Stephen (Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky)
These numbers, along with those listed below, represent the estimated changes in costs relative to a ten-year baseline established by the Congressional Budget Office.
Even if it didn’t, Biden had already planned on doing so by ending the public health emergency, as mentioned below. If you’re thinking, “But didn’t the Senate vote to end the public health emergency?” — you’re thinking of the wrong emergency. That vote ended the National Emergency that Trump declared in March 2020. The Public Health Emergency, declared in January 2020, was the one that authorized enhanced SNAP and expanded Medicaid. Biden unilaterally terminated the latter on May 11, 2023.
Funding wasn’t dependent on Congress’ annual budget; program continuation only required Biden to unilaterally extend the public health emergency. Congress would have needed a veto-proof majority to repeal them — nearly impossible. Imagine a bloc of Democrats defying Biden during an election year, all to zap wildly popular programs. C’mon now.
This is not a radical idea. National emergencies have been declared, and renewed, for less. Could this have faced legal challenges? Maybe. But lawsuits against the pause have consistently failed due to lack of standing. The HEROES Act of 2003 explicitly gives the executive branch authority to modify student loan regulations during national emergencies — authority both Trump and Biden used without issue. The main legal controversy has been over whether the same authority extends to outright loan cancellation, which the Supreme Court struck down in 2023.