Last week, three key House Committees were able to mark up and move forward their portions of the reconciliation bill. Each bill moved through the relevant committee on a party-line vote, with no amendments to the text; although many amendments were introduced by members of the minority party, each one was voted down.

Ways and Means Committee (taxes): On Monday, May 12th, 2025, the House Ways and Means Committee unveiled its sweeping tax package as part of the “one big, beautiful bill” strategy.

Although the bill overall does very little to support children and families, there is some good news: the bill does not currently include elimination of the Social Services Block Grant or a cut to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. These cuts could still be introduced during the House Rules Committee process later this week or in the Senate bill, so we must remain vigilant, but we want to acknowledge this good progress.

CWLA has served as a co-chair of the national SSBG Coalition and helped lead a national effort to save SSBG, including a sign-on letter that gathered 368 signatures from national, state and local organizations from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. We are thankful for the hard work of our members and partners to uplift the needs of children, families and communities and to make the case for preserving SSBG and TANF funding. This was truly a grassroots, group effort, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be working alongside each of you.

Other provisions in the bill are not causes for celebration, however:

  • Requires the taxpayer, not just the child, to have a social security number (SSN) to claim the child tax credit, thus taking away eligibility for the CTC from 4.5 million children living in mixed status households
  • Temporarily expands the CTC, but does nothing for the 17 million children in families with low incomes that do not receive the full benefit
  • Includes tax incentives for school vouchers, undermining public education
  • Allows the Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credit to expire, which will result in millions of people losing health coverage.

Energy and Commerce (Medicaid): On Sunday, May 11, the Energy and Commerce Committee released its reconciliation bill. There are four titles, each dealing with a different policy area; Medicaid provisions are found in the fourth title. Families USA has a helpful section-by-section breakdown of the bill.

National Health Law Program (NHeLP) details the pitfalls of the Medicaid bill, including:

  • Mandates work reporting requirements for most adults. In places like Georgia where work requirements have been tried, it has resulted in otherwise eligible individuals losing health coverage because of their inability to comply with the reporting requirements, not because they weren’t working.
  • Increases red tape and administrative burden with more frequent eligibility checks, which would occur every 6 months instead of every year. People will lose health insurance because of paperwork issues.
  • Bans gender affirming care for minors, which is still supported by all major medical associations and has been proven to reduce suicide attempt rates among trans youth.
  • Penalizes states that provide coverage to immigrants with state-only funds by lowering the federal matching rate (FMAP) for the adult expansion population. This will shift the cost to states and force them to choose between a higher federal match and serving immigrant populations.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, at the request of the minority party, has estimated that between the Medicaid changes and the expiration of the ACA premium tax credits, as many as 13.7 million people will lose healthcare coverage by 2034, the timeframe of the bill. KFF has released a map of the impact by Congressional district and eligibility group.

Agriculture Committee (SNAP): The House Agriculture Committee marked up their reconciliation bill in two parts, beginning at 7:30pm on May 13th and continuing for most of the day of the 14th. The proposals in the bill will slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $300 billion (significantly more than the $230 billion target) and fundamentally change the structure of the SNAP program, shifting additional costs to states. See the analysis from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) here. Other components of the bill include:

  • Thrifty Food Plan Caps: Limits benefit reevaluations to every five years and mandates cost neutrality. This prevents benefits from increasing alongside actual food costs, risking benefit erosion over time.
  • General Work Requirement Age Increase Expands work requirement age to 18–64; narrows parent exemptions to children under 7. It also does not extend the exemption for youth in or from foster care to age 24.

Under these proposals, millions of households, including millions of children and youth from foster care, will lose access to food benefits.

Immigration: the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) has compiled the various reconciliation proposals that hurt immigrants into one document here.

Additionally, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) has published an analysis of the House Judiciary Committee proposals related to unaccompanied children, which would punish children and youth for crossing the border and would make it nearly impossible for family members to become sponsors. These provisions will lead to children remaining in custody longer and make them vulnerable to trafficking or other unsafe outcomes.

What happens next: The Rules Committee will consider the bill at 1:00am on Wednesday, allowing time for a full House floor vote before the Memorial Day recess. Any changes to the bill, such as steeper Medicaid cuts for the Freedom Caucus or a higher State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction for blue-state Republicans, would have to happen in the Rules Committee. It is still uncertain whether the changed bill will get out of the committee or if it could pass the full House floor.