For months, the debate over reconciliation has been conceptual. Now, with Republicans marking up hundreds of pages of legislative text, the fight is here and very real.
Three key committees began their marathon markups Tuesday night, debating some of the most contentious elements of the reconciliation package, like Medicaid cuts, tax cuts and reductions to food-benefit programs.
And as Republicans finally begin the process of turning their rough ideas into measurable proposals, it was already clear that leaders have a long way to go if they’re going to pass their reconciliation legislation out of the House by Memorial Day, as Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested.
Of course, Republicans also know this is just the first draft of their bill. Already, moderates have said some of the cuts go too far, while conservatives have said they don’t go far enough. (There is also a faction of Republicans from states like New York, New Jersey and California who say the GOP’s state and local tax deduction isn’t generous enough for wealthy homeowners in their states.)
But as Democrats mercilessly attack Republicans for trying to pay for tax cuts by slashing medical coverage for the poorest and most vulnerable, GOP lawmakers argued they were actually getting the upper hand by hearing the rhetorical ambushes that Democrats plan to use in the 2026 midterms.
“I mean, this is effectively the beta testing of their messaging for ’26,” Republican Rep. Kat Cammack told NOTUS.
“So really what they’re doing is they’re just giving us their playbook,” she said.
But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — who stopped by the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means hearings Tuesday night — told NOTUS that the “Republican effort to take away health care from the American people in order for them to provide their billionaire donors, like Elon Musk, with massive tax breaks is not something that will be well received with the American people.”
“It will be rejected,” he said. “Many of the members who are going to vote for the largest Medicaid cut in American history will not be back after the 2026 election.”
The truth is that, for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the campaign arm for House Democrats — the markups are the ammunition they need for future attack ads.
“These markups and the votes they’ll have to take in them will force vulnerable Republicans who’ve been hiding from voters to either lie about their plan to make middle-class Americans pay for wildly unpopular tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, or they get caught admitting to ripping away health care and robbing families of food off their dinner table,” said DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton. “Either way, we’ll get them on the record.”
Rep. Greg Landsman, an Ohio Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said he can already see how statements his colleagues on the other side of the aisle have made will haunt them in 2026.
“When members in this hearing have said things like, ‘We are going to take health care away from certain people who don’t need it, who don’t deserve it,’ I have seen the faces of other [Republican] members think to themselves, ‘There’s no way I can explain that to my constituency,’” Landsman told NOTUS.
“It’ll be devastating for them politically,” he continued.
Republicans, for their part, weren’t entirely convinced. Rep. Morgan Griffith, a Virginia Republican, agreed that Democrats were using the markups to bolster their midterm arguments, but he predicted the strategy would backfire.
“When we get this done, and it comes time for the 2026 elections, these horrible things they said are going to happen aren’t going to happen,” Griffith said.
It wasn’t all about scoring political points for Democrats, however.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Energy and Commerce Democrat, told NOTUS the hearing wasn’t “just about elections.” She noted that the decisions Republicans are making would have real effects. (The Congressional Budget Office has said 8.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage as a result of the proposals in the reconciliation bill, on top of another 5 million people who are already projected to lose coverage due to expiring tax credits.)
But even Ocasio-Cortez conceded that voters would have a response to these decisions. “People are going to be looking at how their members of Congress voted,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez argued that Republicans were trying to vote on the most controversial items when most people would be asleep and only the most dedicated Capitol Hill reporters would be watching.
“They are delaying and trying to make sure that, you know, they’re bringing up the Medicaid amendments specifically last, because they want them to come up in the dead of night,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
But the intended order of discussion didn’t stop Democrats from bringing up Medicaid cuts early into the Energy and Commerce markup.
About three hours into Tuesday’s meeting, Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán pulled out a poster with a photograph of a constituent of hers who has spina bifida and relies on Medicaid. She spent minutes reading a letter the constituent had sent her detailing how important in-home supportive services are.
She delivered her comments as lawmakers debated an amendment that would require the Department of Energy’s watchdog to ensure the bill wouldn’t lead to corruption in the permitting process.
Keeping the focus on Medicaid cuts seemed to be the strategy of Democrats on Tuesday.
In their opening remarks at the Energy and Commerce markup, Democrat after Democrat held up posters and read letters from constituents who would be impacted by the cuts.
By the end of opening statements, Democrats all held up pictures of their constituents, whom they referred to as the “faces of Medicaid,” creating a perfect photo opportunity.
Medicaid matters.
— Energy & Commerce Democrats (@EnergyCommerce) May 13, 2025
These are some of the people whose health care is threatened by @HouseCommerce Republicans, who want to gut Medicaid so they can give billionaires giant tax breaks. pic.twitter.com/jQZDT4tTVu
Republicans countered that, as Cammack said, “Not a single person on these posters is going to be impacted by this legislation.”
Over in the drafty Ways and Means Committee room, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford made a similar point to Ocasio-Cortez, displaying a poster board with this message: “In the dead of night … Republicans are screwing Americans while we sleep.”
The Republican Ways and Means account on X responded at 7:12 p.m., “In the dead of night? Sir, it’s 7 pm.”
Still, Horsford was one of the more visibly passionate Democrats at the Ways and Means markup. Although he has been vocal about supporting President Donald Trump’s agenda items that would deliver tax cuts for the middle class — like “no tax on tips“ — he blasted Republicans for expanding tax breaks for the wealthy. (For example, the GOP’s proposal would increase the estate tax exemption from $14 million to $15 million and would increase the pass-through business deduction from 20% to 23%.)
Republicans, of course, spent significant chunks of their time attempting to debunk claims that their bill would mostly benefit billionaires. Ways and Means chair Jason Smith said the bill “means the end of Washington’s special treatment of wealthy elites,” citing a provision that would tax university endowments at the corporate rate.
But in a stunning moment two hours into the hearing, Democrats were handed fresh data to back up their attacks.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan panel that scores tax legislation, published its distribution analysis of the tax bill. The committee — which found earlier in the day that the tax provisions would add $3.81 trillion to the national debt over nine years — reported that the average tax rate for households making less than $15,000 annually would actually see a tax increase from the legislation, while those making over $1 million would see a collective $96 billion decrease. (People making more than $1 million would see, on average, a tax cut of about 3%, while people making less than $15,000 would see their taxes increase by about 1%.)
Still, some Republicans are optimistic the reconciliation process will actually help the party on the campaign trail.
Ahead of the late-night Agriculture Committee markup, Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson said he didn’t think the agriculture text was a tough vote.
“In fact, when you’re on the side of the angel with legislation, it makes for some really good campaigning back home,” he told reporters.
As a way to save federal dollars, the agriculture text includes proposals to have states share the costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program with the federal government. Some GOP members insist that’s not a benefits cut.
But anti-hunger advocates have said the state pay-in proposal would likely result in people losing benefits, and as the text was being hammered out, some Republican members warned against a more extreme version of those cost-sharing proposals. Some state officials have also suggested that states would further restrict SNAP benefits if their governments had to foot some of the bill for food benefits.
Democratic Rep. Nikki Budzinski said she knew Republicans were trying to call cuts “a cost shift” or “a reduction in future benefits.”
“Just because you say something over and over again doesn’t make it true,” Budzinski said.
“When we leave this markup, I can tell the farmers in my district, ‘I fought for you,’” she said. “I can look my neighbors in the eyes and say, ‘I fought for you.’ Unfortunately, not everybody in this room will be able to do the same thing.”
Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, a longtime SNAP advocate, delivered a passionate speech saying Republicans were making “Marie Antoinette look down to earth.”
“There’s a special place in hell for people who take food away from hungry people,” McGovern said. “So please spare us the lectures about the dignity of work. Your bill humiliates people who are already struggling to survive. Spare us the crocodile tears and faint outrage about waste and abuse.”
McGovern concluded that Democrats would not be “deterred in our mission to make sure that every American knows whose side the Republicans are on.”
—
Oriana González and Riley Rogerson are reporters at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz and Nuha Dolby are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.