216 GOP House Members Just Voted to Destroy the Safety Net and Deliver a Trillion-Dollar Tax Cut to the Rich

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly passed a Senate-approved budget resolution that moves Republicans one step closer to their ultimate goal of delivering massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and imposing "grotesque" and "heartless" cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other life-saving safety net programs.

"The representatives who just chose the bank accounts of their donors over the health and wellbeing of their constituents should be ashamed."
--Morris Pearl, Patriotic Millionaires

The final vote tally was 216-212, with 20 Republicans defecting from their party. No Democrats backed the measure.

Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, called the GOP budget an "immoral calamity" in a statement following Thursday's vote.

"The Republicans in the House have just advanced an immoral tax plan that will have disastrous real-world consequences for many millions of Americans," Clemente said. "It's a calamity of their own making, and voters will remember it."

Despite insistence from President Donald Trump and the GOP that their budget is pro-working class, analysis after analysis has shown that their proposals would in fact raise taxes on many middle class families while sending an enormous windfall--$1.5 trillion over the next decade--to the top one percent.

Meanwhile, notes Vox's Dylan Matthews, "the federal welfare state would be rolled back in just about every dimension."

"All non-Medicare health programs would see a cut of $1.3 trillion, or nearly 30 percent, by 2027," Matthews adds. "Medicare would be cut too, to the tune of $473 billion. There is $1 trillion over 10 years in mystery cuts to mandatory programs, cuts that would in practice almost certainly hurt programs for the poor."

Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement Thursday that "[t]he representatives who just chose the bank accounts of their donors over the health and wellbeing of their constituents should be ashamed."

"Two hundred sixteen members of the House just voted to hurt millions of vulnerable Americans, including many of their own constituents, just to give millionaires like me a massive, unnecessary tax break," Pearl added. "The American people don't want a $1.5 trillion cut to Medicare and Medicaid and they don't want a huge tax cut for the rich, but wealthy donors do."

Proving Pearl's point, both the billionaire U.S. President Donald Trump and the Koch Brothers-backed Freedom Works celebrated the resolution's passage.

"On to tax reform!" declared FreedomWorks in a statement. And Trump, who personally stands to make millions for he and and his family if the GOP tax plan ultimately goes through, tweeted: "Big news--Budget just passed."

This post will likely be updated...

Here are all of the House members who voted for the budget measure: