Kaine Files Amendments to Dangerous Republican Budget Megabill

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, announced his amendments to President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ budget megabill in an attempt to thwart the legislation’s most catastrophic impacts. The partisan proposal—which Republicans are ramming through Congress using a legislative process that enables them to expedite it and pass it with a fewer number of votes than most Senate legislation—would slash critical funding for programs that Virginians rely on to disproportionately give tax cuts to the wealthy.

“We should be focused on growing and supporting the middle-class, not passing Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ Hurt People, Kill Jobs, and Spike the Debt to Reward the Rich Act,” said Kaine. “I’m filing amendments to protect Americans from some of the worst of the worst from this Administration and its partisan megabill—from safeguarding our rural hospitals and preventing Americans from losing their health insurance, to keeping families from going hungry, standing up for our veterans, and preventing energy cost increases. I’m also filing amendments to address ways this bill is uniquely bad for Virginia, including to restore funding the Richmond Water Treatment Plant desperately needs and to address the proposed transfer of the Space Shuttle Discovery from Chantilly to Houston at enormous expense to the American taxpayer. The fact that these amendments are necessary in the first place goes to show that Republicans will stop at nothing to give the wealthiest a massive tax break.”

Kaine filed a series of amendments, including:

• To rename the legislation the “Hurt People, Kill Jobs, and Spike the Debt to Reward the Rich Act.”
• To protect Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from cuts by reversing tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and large corporations.
• To protect Virginia’s rural hospitals by mitigating changes to the Medicaid provider tax program.
• To crack down on the Trump Administration’s mass firing of veterans from the federal workforce, by prohibiting firings of federal employee veterans without submitting a report to Congress.
• To protect Virginians’ health care coverage by eliminating the estate tax cut for multi-millionaires.
• To provide small businesses, farmers, and low- and moderate-income families with relief from Trump’s senseless trade wars.
• To prevent the weakening and destruction of unions representing federal workers.
• To require agencies to cease illegal mass firings and illegal withholdings of appropriated funding.
• To prevent utility bill increases by blocking Republicans’ effort to create a new tax on wind and solar power and undo energy efficiency tax credits Kaine helped create through the Inflation Reduction Act.
• To include Kaine’s bipartisan Jumpstarting Our Businesses By Supporting Students (JOBS) Act to help more Americans get good-paying jobs by allowing students to use federal Pell Grants—need-based education grants for lower-income individuals—to pay for shorter-term job training programs for the first time.
• To restore funding for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program within the Federal Emergency Management Agency. BRIC grants were canceled by the Trump Administration for projects across Virginia, including a $12 million grant for the Richmond Water Treatment Plant and a $24 million grant to enhance the Lake Meade Dam in Portsmouth.
• To prevent the transfer of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia—where it is available for viewing to the public free of charge—to Houston, Texas. The transfer would cost hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars and force Americans to pay an admission fee to view the shuttle.
• To align a portion of munitions procurement spending to the European Deterrence Initiative to support European partners’ capacity to provide their own national security.
• To prevent Republicans from hiding the true cost of their bill and violating long-standing Senate rules.

Full text of Kaine’s amendments is available here.

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