The House Committee on Energy and Commerce marked up its contribution to President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Tuesday, a significant accomplishment for Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). While the legislation does contain some welcome reforms to Medicaid and delivered on its $880 billion deficit reduction target, the reforms agreed to fall far short of what could have been accomplished. As the legislation advances first to the House floor and then to the Senate, the current version must be the floor and no further dwindling should be tolerated.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, $715 billion of the deficit savings identified by the Committee comes from reductions in healthcare spending, almost all from the Medicaid program. This does not mean spending on Medicaid will decline; quite the opposite. The CBO projects that Medicaid will continue to rise year-over-year for every year covered in its analysis. It is just that with the House Republican reforms, spending would grow at a slower rate than before, a rate that had previously surpassed both Medicare and Social Security spending growth.