How the G.O.P. Bill Saves Money: Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork

[In It to Win It]

NYT - Gift Link

Low-income Americans would lose health coverage and government food assistance on an unprecedented scale under the giant Republican policy bill, according to outside analysts.

But to hear President Trump and Republican lawmakers describe the bill as it nears a vote in the Senate, it cuts no benefits at all.

“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you’re not going to feel any of it,” Mr. Trump said Thursday at the White House.

That claim rests on a maneuver embedded throughout the sprawling legislation: Instead of explicitly reducing benefits, Republicans would make them harder to get and to keep. The effect, analysts say, is the same, with millions fewer Americans receiving assistance. By including dozens of changes to dates, deadlines, document requirements and rules, Republicans have turned paperwork into one of the bill’s crucial policy-making tools, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to help offset their signature tax cuts.

“A lot of currently eligible people are actually going to lose benefits,” said Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, who studies the effects of administrative burdens. “Not because they’re ineligible, but because they can’t handle the set of massive roadblocks Republicans are putting in their way.”

Rs claim to be against bureaucracy. That’s BS. They *favor* complex and needless admin when it keeps poor people poor. They only oppose regulation it when it means regulating wealth, and then they oppose even simple and needed admin. (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/u...

— Jamie Fox (@whatlawfoxsays.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T15:41:59.377Z

This ruse allows them to say they support the programs (which scores political/moral points) while knowingly limiting access in the ground.

For my friends, everything; for my enemies, administrative law.

— Jamie Fox (@whatlawfoxsays.bsky.social) 2025-06-29T15:41:59.378Z

[Wingus Dingus]

1. I knew this was how they were going to go--

basically kick you off whatever and make you jump through excessive hoops to restore your benefits. Would it be possible for the Democratic Party or other progressive organizations to offer assistance or volunteers to help the new victims re-establish their enrollments or navigate the changes? A website, library outreach, church outreach, something so that they don't get away with this?