Congressional Republicans have passed their domestic policy bill that makes sweeping changes to entitlement programs like Medicaid and SNAP, significantly increases funding for the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts and cuts funding for a number of environmental programs. It now goes to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
A main provision of the bill would make most of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. Independent reports show those tax breaks largely affected wealthy Americans, but the Trump administration claims low- and middle-income families will continue to save $10,000 per year if the cuts are extended.
According to the Yale Budget Lab, the bill is expected to raise the federal deficit by at least $3 trillion over the next decade.
In Oregon, the impacts of the legislation will be significant. An analysis of an earlier version of the bill found that the state would be disproportionately hit by the cuts to Medicaid, with more people likely to lose coverage and end up uninsured. The Senate’s version of the bill would also cut funds to the state’s timber counties, and could reshape how Oregonian students pay for college, as well as how they pay back student loans.
Here are five ways the bill will impact Oregonians:
Monumental changes to the Oregon Health Plan
Among the most significant impacts of the bill are its changes to how states like Oregon administer and fund their Medicaid programs, including new eligibility requirements.
New work requirements for coverage
The bill requires adults 19-64 to prove they are working or volunteering 80 hours a month to enroll in Medicaid or keep their coverage. Some groups — including parents of children aged 13 and under and people with certain disabilities or medical conditions — would be exempt.
The bill also mandates some Medicaid recipients, about 40% of OHP members, do more frequent eligibility checks to maintain coverage.
The state health authority estimates that between 150,000 and 200,000 Oregonians could lose Medicaid coverage as a result of these requirements. That includes people who aren’t meeting the work rule, and those who will struggle to complete the new paperwork or online reporting requirements.
The more frequent eligibility checks required by the bill will cost upwards of $100 million for the state to implement and will require updates to technology systems and new administrative positions.
The work requirements take effect December 31, 2026. States having difficulty meeting that deadline can request a two-year delay.
Limits on how Oregon pays for care
The bill places new restrictions on local taxes that states use to fund their Medicaid programs. This provision would cost Oregon an estimated $11.7 billion in lost federal and state revenue over 10 years, according to the state health authority.
States have historically been allowed to tax Medicaid providers, like hospitals, and then to use the revenue and the federal match to pay those same providers for Medicaid services. But states had to limit those taxes to 6% of patient revenue or under, to avoid triggering federal scrutiny.
The bill ratchets down that allowable provider tax over time to a maximum of 3.5% In Oregon, a 6% provider tax and the federal match provides about a quarter of total funding for the Oregon Health Plan.
The state would lose $872 million in the 2027-29 biennium, $1.94 billion in the 2029-31 biennium, and $8.86 billion between 2031-2035 after the full cut to the provider tax takes effect, according to an estimate from the Oregon Health Authority.
Backfilling that amount using state tax revenue would be extremely difficult. If legislators can’t figure out how to replace the provider tax with general fund revenue or another local source, Oregon could be forced to cut more people from Medicaid or reduce benefits.
Planned Parenthood ban
The bill imposes a one-year ban on state Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood and some other health care nonprofits that provide abortions.
Planned Parenthood is already barred from using federal dollars to pay for abortions, but has relied on Medicaid as a major payer for the other services it provides to low-income people.
Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette has said about 70% of its patients pay for services like pap smears and STI testing through Medicaid. The bill will strain Planned Parenthood’s finances and will make it likely some clinics will have to close.
Costs could go up for marketplace plans
For all that’s in the bill, one thing that isn’t: It doesn’t extend tax credits that have helped Americans afford health insurance that they buy on the marketplace through the Affordable Care Act.
Some subsidies for plans on the federal marketplace expire at the end of 2025. OHA officials said in a statement that if Congress doesn’t extend those credits, Oregon enrollees will pay an average of $960 more for insurance annually and could result in people dropping the coverage altogether.
Cuts to food assistance
The budget bill will slash federal aid that pays for food assistance to Oregonians. That’s almost certain to create major questions about whether the state will cut food assistance in coming years.
The bill would upend decades of precedent, during which the federal government fully funded its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Instead, the vast majority of states would be required to pick up some of the tab for their programs.
In Oregon, where one in six people access SNAP benefits every month, the price will be particularly steep.
The state’s SNAP “error rate” — the rate at which it over or underpays benefits — is among the highest in the country, at 14.06%. Under the Republican bill, that means Oregon will be required to pay for 15% of its SNAP costs. Under a last-minute change negotiated by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, high-error-rate states like Oregon can push cost sharing back by one year.
According to an analysis from Oregon Department of Human Services, the shift will contribute to $425 million in new yearly costs to the state beginning in 2028. But the other pieces of the bill will hike some costs sooner.
Oregon could choose to find the money to cover those costs, cut benefits or eliminate SNAP entirely.
“The proposed cuts threaten to take food off the table for Oregonians, place unsustainable financial burdens on the State, and risk the well-being of families and local economies,” Oregon DHS officials said in a fact sheet detailing the federal bill’s impacts. “This would leave tens of thousands of people in Oregon without food and create sharp disparities between states, undermining the promise of a national food program.”
The federal cuts come just days after Oregon lawmakers failed to pass several bills aimed at curbing hunger in the state during the legislative session. Lawmakers cited, in part, budget uncertainty due to cuts on the federal level.
Fewer funds to fight climate change
Oregon has been promised nearly $200 million in federal funds to fight climate change through the Inflation Reduction Act, a pillar of former President Joe Biden’s domestic policy agenda.
But the Republican-backed budget bill seeks to eliminate much of the federal government’s involvement in climate change response. It stops federal tax credits for people buying electric vehicles or making homes energy efficient, and it restricts programs that seek to limit carbon emissions from industry. Tracking climate change could become more difficult; the bill claws back funding for greenhouse gas reporting programs.
Even Inflation Reduction Act renewable projects that are already in the works could be penalized, said U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, because the bill could cut off funding for anything not completed by 2027. “If somebody is building something and they will be done in 2028, they may lose that subsidy,” she said. “That feels absolutely illegal.”
“It’s the most anti-environment and anti-climate bill in history,” Lindsey Scholten, political director at the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, said Wednesday.
Financial aid for higher education
Also among the most significant impacts of the bill are changes to Pell Grants, the federal government’s largest form of financial aid for low-income college students. The bill adds $10.5 billion to the program, and expands Pell Grant eligibility to students in short-term job training programs.
However, it also includes a provision that eliminates the Grad PLUS loan program. This financial aid allowed students to borrow funds to cover their graduate programs, including housing and food expenses. During the last school year, 400 graduate students at Portland State University used this loan to pay for their programs. That’s more than 8% of the school’s total enrolled graduate students.
The bill also takes aim at federal protections for student loan borrowers, limiting the ability to pause student loan payments due to unemployment or financial hardship. And it eliminates a Biden-era plan that made payments more affordable and extended payment plans.
Public lands and private forests
Oregon will see more logging, less timber money going to local communities and less support for private forest owners. And renewable energy projects planned for federally owned lands could cost much more to develop and run.
The Republican-backed budget legislation calls for the U.S. Forest Service to boost logging by 75% over the next decade. It’s not clear if that logging goal is realistic. The Forest Service has missed its timber targets every year for more than a decade, though it’s possible that tariffs on Canadian lumber could boost demand for logging in the United States, according to industry analysts.
However much more is logged, Oregon counties will not get a cut. That’s a change from current practice. Many counties in rural areas rely on a cut of revenues from timber sales on federal public lands to pay for schools, law enforcement and public infrastructure.
“They are removing timber receipt sharing, so that timber receipts go back to the Treasury and they are not going to schools,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle said Wednesday. “The places they are hurting most are our rural communities”
The bill also adds new fees for solar and wind projects on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land, and it introduces new taxes on the energy generated by those projects. It’s not immediately clear how that might affect a green energy developer’s proposal to build a massive solar farm near Redmond.
The bill would also claw back up to $150 million to protect old-growth and mature forests and to conduct environmental reviews in federal forests across the country, and $400 million in funding to help private forest owners with climate-related programs
OPB’s Tiffany Camhi and Kyra Buckley contributed reporting.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.