‘Start Over From Scratch’: Nobel Laureate Economists Denounce GOP Budget Bill

June 4, 2025 | johnmudd

Common Dreams, , Jun 02, 2025

“The House bill addresses none of the nation’s key economic challenges usefully and exacerbates many of them.”

Half a dozen Nobel Prize-winning economists on Monday expressed their “grave concerns” about the sprawling budget reconciliation package passed last month by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, warning that slashing an already frayed social safety net and exploding the record deficit in service of massive tax cuts for the wealthiest households will worsen the nation’s economic woes.

“The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits,” Daron Acemoglu, Peter Diamond, Oliver Hart, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz wrote in an open letter published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.

“The Medicaid cuts constitute a sad step backward in the nation’s commitment to providing access to healthcare for all,” the economists continued. “Proponents of the House bill often claim that these Medicaid cuts can be achieved simply by imposing work reporting requirements on healthy, working-age adults. But healthy, working-age adults are by definition not heavy consumers of health spending, so achieving the budgeted Medicaid cuts will obviously harm others as well.”

Read More: Common Dreams

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