FY 27 Poison Pills Added by House Republicans Would Drive Up Costs

Money Plate Cuts Budget

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House Republicans have added more than 275 poison pills to their draft FY27 spending bills, according to the Clean Budget Coalition. Many of these poison pills would drive up costs for regular Americans who are struggling to afford housing, health care, education, groceries, and other everyday expenses. All of them must be removed from any final spending package, the coalition maintains.

“These poison pills are an affront to every American who believes that our appropriations process should serve them and not special interests,” said Joshua Miller, Congress Watch director for Public Citizen and co-chair of the coalition. “Republicans have used a closed-door process to sneak provisions into must-pass bills that will harm the health, safety, and well being of the American people. The public can see that Republicans are fighting for the wealthy, the connected, and the corrupt at our expense. Enough is enough – this must stop.”

House Republicans have added poison pills that would:

  • Overrule a decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to limit the median family income level for single family direct loans (Ag, Rural, FDA, Section 759);
  • Block free and equitable access to federally funded research (CJS, Section 550);
  • Stop new rules that restrict unfair and anticompetitive business practices, raising costs for consumers (FSGG, Section 509);
  • Block a requirement that small financial institutions collect and report demographic and credit data on applications made by women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses, which is key to fair lending practices and preventing financial discrimination (FSGG, Section 520);
  • Stop the U.S. Department of Education from implementing rules that protect students from predatory for-profit colleges (Labor HHS, Section 316);
  • Eliminate subsidized student loans for college students, increasing the debt owed after graduation for five million borrowers (Labor HHS, Section 319);
  • Cancel $2 billion for operating Affordable Care Act health insurance plans, which would threaten the health insurance marketplace and put health care coverage for millions of Americans in jeopardy (Labor HHS, Section 531);
  • Halt new rules for reimbursing veterans for transportation costs to and from non-standard and offsite health care facilities (Mil Con, VA, Section 257);
  • Strip tenant protections and make it easier for landlords to evict families in federally assisted housing by eliminating the 30-day notice requirement enacted in the bipartisan CARES Act (THUD, Section 241); and
  • Prohibit the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from improving the energy efficiency of new housing – driving up household energy costs (THUD, Section 242).

“Congressional Republicans are loading up bills to fund the government with partisan poison pills that will make the affordability crisis facing millions of Americans even worse than it already is,” said Charlie Ellsworth, consultant for the coalition. “This comes after they just spent the last two months doing absolutely nothing to lower costs in their partisan bill to fund the president’s deportation force. Democrats must reject this Republican agenda to increase costs on the American people.”