In a razor thin vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the budget resolution, which would cut trillions of dollars in taxes while scaling back safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP. Kentucky’s House delegation, five Republicans and one Democrat, were split on the bill. GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who has long expressed dissatisfaction with the bill, voted “no,” as did Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Louisville.
Massie was one of just two Republican dissent votes — with another Republican voting “present” — drawing the ire of President Donald Trump. The president told reporters before privately addressing the caucus Tuesday, “I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he’s a grand stander.”
Other members of Kentucky’s Congressional delegation have been effusive in their praise of Trump and his budget bill. GOP Rep. Andy Barr, who represents Lexington and the surrounding area, called Trump the “dealmaker-in-chief” as he credited him with pushing through the budget bill on Fox Business.
“The winner is the American people. The winners are the people of Kentucky and the people of every state in this country who will now see their taxes reduced, the border secure, Medicaid more efficient and right-sized for the people who need it,” Barr said on Mornings with Maria. “Waste, fraud and abuse gone, energy dominance.”
Barr is running for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat next year, and he and the other top GOP contender in the race are likely vying for Trump’s endorsement.
Massie has continued to vocally push back on the budget, even as Trump goes so far as to suggest the seventh-term Kentucky representative should be “voted out of office.” Massie posted on social media that if the party was serious about cutting spending, “we’d be cutting spending now.”
Rep. Morgan McGarvey, Kentucky’s sole Democratic representation in Congress, voted with the rest of his party against the budget. He said in a statement that the budget will disproportionately hurt “our most vulnerable.”
“I offered a simple amendment to guarantee kids and disabled veterans won't lose their Medicaid coverage, but Republicans couldn't even agree on that. Instead, Republicans betrayed Kentucky families and voted to add over $5 trillion to the nation's debt, all so that their billionaire donors pay even less in taxes,” McGarvey said. “It is immoral — I voted no.”
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The budget bill extends Trump’s tax cuts from his previous term and would temporarily eliminate taxes on tips and overtime. Massie criticized the plan for creating $3.8 trillion in tax cuts without cutting spending enough to avoid increasing the deficit.
“We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting course for the iceberg,” Massie said on the House floor.
According to Politico, Massie said he doesn’t believe the bill takes Medicaid work requirements seriously, as the bill passed early Thursday would wait to require childless adults without disabilities to prove they are working at least 80 hours per month beginning at the end of 2026.
While Massie said Medicaid work requirements should be stronger, several Kentuckians spoke out Thursday against changes to Medicaid eligibility and cuts to the program in general. Advocates fear the requirements will amount to reporting requirements, and the extra paperwork will mean eligible adults get kicked off too. The bill also shortens the period between eligibility checks and creates more income and residency hurdles for participants.
Dustin Pugel with the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, an independent left-leaning organization, said the resolution also fails to extend subsidies for Kynect, Kentucky’s health insurance exchange. Pugel estimated 47,000 Kentuckians could become uninsured due to the end of those subsidies, alongside the estimated hundreds of thousands who could lose benefits due to the additional work and eligibility reporting requirements.
“This House proposal would not just eliminate coverage, but could also eliminate jobs, especially in rural areas, and it would damage our progress in tackling severe problems like addiction and even cost lives in the long run,” Pugel said.
Dr. Edward Miller, a maternal-fetal medicine and high-risk obstetrician with the University of Louisville, said Kentucky already suffers from severe health disparities and chronic health conditions. He said losing access to health insurance would mean Kentuckians will have to choose between consistent health care, potentially to manage chronic conditions, and other immediate needs.
“They are losing decades of their lives for conditions that are treatable, and this is only going to be accelerated, and these disparities are only going to be accelerated,” Miller said. “Kentucky is only going to get sicker by decreasing access to Medicaid.”
The changes to Medicaid are due in large part to Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie, who chairs the committee that crafted the cuts, that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will kick 8.6 million people off the health care plan over the decade.
In a statement, Republican Party of Kentucky spokesperson Andy Westberry commended Guthrie for his leadership and said the changes will keep Medicaid “strong and focused on the Americans it was always meant to serve.”
The budget resolution also shifts some of the burden of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called SNAP, to states. In the 2024 fiscal year, 13% of Kentuckians — almost 600,000 Kentuckians — benefited from SNAP, more than two-thirds going to families with children, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The state partially pays for the cost of administering SNAP benefits but the federal government pays for the full cost of the benefits.
According to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, the shift to states could mean Kentucky needs to find anywhere from $63 to $190 million dollars annually in its budget or cut eligibility.
“They can either find that money: they can do that by raising taxes, which doesn't seem likely, or by just adding it to the budget and reducing other budgetary items,” Pugel said. “Or they could choose to forgo the SNAP program altogether and take food assistance away from nearly 600,000 Kentuckians, who are mostly kids and seniors. So it creates a really difficult set of choices for the legislature.”
Melissa Boteach is the chief policy officer for Zero to Three, an advocacy organization for young children. She said the budget resolution is passing the bill to states. She said children’s health is dependent on the health of their caretakers and the communities around them, which she said will suffer under this bill.
“These needs aren't going away. It's not as though families will stop needing health care, or all of a sudden, grocery prices will dramatically go down,” Boteach said. “In absence of these programs, families will go hungry. Families will lose access to health care unless states step up. And most states can't afford to put more of their own dollars into these programs.”
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
