Update 857 – WH: 90-Day 10% Tariff Freeze
For 75 Trade Partners; China Rate at 125%
House Republicans are determined to push multiple pieces of economic policy legislation through the chamber this week before they leave town for the Easter recess, including resolutions to keep banking overdraft fees high and payment apps like Cash App and Elon Musk’s X Money unsupervised by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The House GOP also hopes to approve a blueprint for reconciliation – a process Republicans plan to use to enact massive cuts to federal assistance in exchange for a package of tax cuts skewed towards the ultra-wealthy – passed by the Senate early Saturday morning.
Additionally, the House will vote on advancing the SAVE Act, which drastically changes the registration process for millions of Americans and risks disenfranchising broad swaths of legal voters. The bill, which was passed last Congress with the help of five Democrats, was reintroduced on the first day of the 119th Congress, suggesting it is a major Republican priority.
First, we take a brief look at the week’s dizzying tariff developments.
Best,
Dana
Tariffs
President Trump’s unprecedented “Liberation Day” tariff announcement shocked the markets while spreading dangerous uncertainty among business leaders and consumers. In the end, rumors of a potential 90-day pause rang true, with the President announcing all countries will be subject to a lower rate of 10 percent for 90 days, along with a 125 percent tariff on China in response to their retaliation.
The markets tumbled early this week, with the S&P 500 approaching bear market territory, falling 20 percent from its recent peak. The nearly 70 countries that have reached out to start negotiations with the President seemed to inform the retreat. Still unclear to foreign counterparts are what concessions will be enough to maintain the lower tariffs past the pause and how long these trade negotiations will take. Republicans in Congress are beginning to split with the White House as their constituencies face a harsh reality, with agricultural sectors taking a hard hit in retaliatory tariffs and the administration confirming that exemptions are not on the horizon. We will take a look at this fallout in our Friday round-up.
House Republican Legislative Agenda This Week
House Republicans are pushing to advance a slate of dangerous legislation this week, ahead of the Easter recess. Particularly concerning are two resolutions that seek to overturn key consumer protections, the final budget resolution setting up reconciliation, and the SAVE Act.
CRAs to Block the CFPB Rules
This afternoon, the House is set to vote on two separate Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions that seek to overturn key consumer protection rules recently finalized by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). 20/20 Vision encourages all members to oppose both CRA resolutions and protect consumers across the country.
- Overdraft Fee Rule CRA
The first, S.J.Res. 18, a CRA resolution led by Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chair Tim Scott (R-SC), seeks to overturn the CFPB’s overdraft fee rule. The rule would reduce overdraft fees charged by insured depository institutions and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets from the average $35 charged today to $5, or an amount that covers costs and losses. The CFPB estimates that this will save consumers up to $5 billion in annual overdraft fees, or $225 annually per household that pays overdraft fees. The rule was finalized by the CFPB in December and is set to go into effect on October 1.
The CRA resolution would not only prevent the rule from taking effect, but would also prevent the CFPB from issuing any substantially similar regulation limiting overdraft fees in the future.
- Payment App Oversight Rule CRA
The House is also set to vote on S.J.Res. 28, a CRA resolution led by Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE), which seeks to overturn the CFPB’s payment app oversight rule. The rule would help protect users of payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App by making participants in the market for general-use digital consumer payment applications subject to the CFPB’s supervisory authority under the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA). This would allow the bureau to oversee companies’ compliance with the law, protecting their users from fraud and safeguarding their sensitive information from unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices. Payment apps are regularly used by three-quarters of Americans and have become the second most common source of payment fraud.
Notably, the rule would also allow the CFPB to supervise Elon Musk’s X-Money. The rule was issued in November and applies to America’s largest nonbank companies. This CRA resolution would not only block the rule from taking effect but would create a permanent blind spot to federal oversight of payment apps by prohibiting the CFPB from issuing a substantially similar rule in the future.
House Resolution to Initiate Reconciliation Process
This week, the House is aiming to pass a budget resolution that would “unlock” reconciliation – a privileged process Republicans are trying to use to implement partisan cuts to federal assistance in exchange for another package of tax cuts skewed towards the ultra-wealthy. For the purpose of reconciliation, budget resolutions are a crucial first step as they give committees instructions to propose legislation that adds to or subtracts from the deficit by a certain amount, essentially serving as a blueprint for the final legislative package. Both chambers passed their own versions of a budget resolution in February, but they must be identical to initiate the reconciliation process.
The amended resolution under consideration, which advanced out of the Senate early Saturday morning following an all-night vote-a-rama, is unique in that it gives different instructions to committees in each chamber. Senate committees with instructions to reduce the deficit were simply instructed to find at least $1 billion in cuts, however, the resolution leaves high instructed cuts for House committees – which caused great concern across the country in February – intact. Specifically, the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Agriculture Committee – which oversee Medicaid and SNAP – were instructed to propose $880 billion and $230 billion in cuts, respectively. Experts note that it is impossible for these committees to meet their instructions without significant cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, despite “promises” from Republicans that beneficiaries will be held harmless.
These same concerns could be seen in amendments under consideration during the Senate vote-a-rama last Friday, many of which were offered by Democrats to put Republicans on the record for supporting the blatantly regressive GOP agenda. While no such amendments passed during vote-a-rama, Republican Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) did cross the aisle in support of measures that would have protected important federal programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Senator Hawley even cosponsored an amendment with Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) – an unusual partnership – to strike the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s $880 billion instruction for cuts.
Ultimately, the resolution passed the Senate in a 51-48 vote on Saturday morning, with Republicans Rand Paul (R-KY) and Susan Collins (R-ME) standing in opposition (Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) was absent, tending to a family emergency). Senator Paul has taken issue with fiscal responsibility while Senator Collins objected primarily over concerns about Medicaid cuts – qualms that are also coming from the right and left wings of the House GOP. Speaker Johnson and the Trump administration have their work cut out for them if they want to prevent similar defections during this week’s House vote, which could surely tank the measure given the extremely tight margin in the lower chamber.
As the budget resolution moves through the House, the irreconcilable nature of promises made to different factions of congressional Republicans is becoming clearer. Moderates are being promised that hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to programs like SNAP and Medicaid will not hurt beneficiaries, and fiscal hawks are being assured that cuts will be even deeper than outlined in the budget resolution – duplicity made possible by the fact that resolutions don’t contain actual legislation. Last night, President Trump went as far as to ask House Republicans to “Close your eyes and get there” in reference to passing the budget resolution, clearly showing a lack of genuine concern over points of opposition. Even if House Republican leadership and the administration can overcome unease coming from moderates and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus (HFC) and pass the resolution, they will need to “face the music” when it comes to a final reconciliation package enacting their harmful and fiscally irresponsible agenda.
Once this agenda is spelled out in a final reconciliation package, it will be clear that their plan is to cut funding for important government assistance – most of which goes to the neediest, lowest-income Americans – to finance another round of tax cuts skewed toward the ultra-wealthy. This compounding dynamic (cuts to government funding and skewed tax cuts) was explored recently by Natasha Sarin’s Yale Budget Lab, which found that the House plan for reconciliation would lead to a 5 percent reduction in after tax income for individuals in the lowest income quintile (-$1,125/year) while the after-tax incomes of people in the highest income quintile would increase by 2.5 percent ($6,220/year):
Source: Yale Budget Lab
The budget resolution advanced out of the rules committee this morning in a party-line, 9-3 vote. The House now plans to consider the resolution on the full House floor at around 3:30 this afternoon, though the reconciliation timeline will likely remain fluid.
SAVE Act Vote Expected in the House
For years, Republicans have decried noncitizen voting in federal elections despite a lack of evidence to that point. The SAVE Act – which seeks to address this dubiously substantiated problem – would change the process for voters to register or update their registration and risk disenfranchising rural voters, married women, trans people, Indigenous people, Americans living abroad, and working-class Americans. The bill was approved in the House last Congress with support from a handful of Democrats and is all but guaranteed to pass the House once again. Should the bill pass the Senate and be signed into law, it would require that the Election Assistance Commission adopt and transmit guidance for implementation to the Chief State Election Official of each state within 10 days.
Identification Requirements
The bill’s Proof of Citizenship requirements have created confusion. Outlined below are the types of documents that would be required for voters under passage, as well as potential pitfalls for each.
- REAL ID
The legislation outlines “a form of identification consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States. With only 56 percent of driver’s licenses meeting the standard requirements of REAL IDs as of January 2024, millions of Americans would likely need to update their driver’s licenses in order to be able to vote. Additionally, according to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles’ website, Permanent residents who are not citizens (Green Card holders) and DACA Recipients, and those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are eligible for REAL IDs on a temporary basis. Visually, there is nothing that separates citizens from non-citizens. Despite this, the REAL ID is the only identification option that does not require proof of place of birth. REAL IDs cost an additional $10 on the cost of a regular license.
- Passport
As discussed in a previous update, 146 million Americans do not hold a passport, and the majority of these citizens live in rural areas and Red states. The application fee for a Passport book is $130, a Passport card is $30, and both together are $160. There is a $35 charge once the identification is approved. Requiring Americans to pay for an additional type of identification just to vote is voter disenfranchisement.
- Military Identification Card
The Military Identification Card can only be used in conjunction with a Military Service Record that includes the applicant’s birthplace in the United States.
- Valid Government-Issued photo identification card
Should a voter not have the first four types of documents listed above, another photo identification card issued by a Federal, State, or Tribal government can be shown in conjunction with a:
- Birth certificate
- U.S. hospital record of birth
- Final adoption decree showing the applicant’s name and the applicant’s place of birth in the United States
- Consular report of Birth Abroad to a U.S. citizen
- Naturalization certificate or certificate of citizenship issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security, or any other document or method of proof of US citizenship issued by the Federal government
- American Indian Card by DHS with KIC classification
A traditional driver’s license is an example of identification that would require additional proof of citizenship. According to the Brennan Center, 9 percent, or 21.3 million Americans, don’t have access to proof of citizenship, including a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers. This is disproportionately true for Americans of color.
Groups that are critical of the SAVE Act have concerns about married women, as the vast majority of women who marry take their husband’s last name, who will not have a birth certificate that matches their legal name. Representative Mary Miller (R-IL), a cosponsor of the SAVE Act, claims that the legislation includes “robust protections for married women whose names have changed,” yet the legislation makes no mention of married women. Instead, it instructs states to “come up with processes to accept additional documentation when voters have a discrepancy on their proof-of-citizenship document.”
In-Person, Online, By Mail Registration
The SAVE Act would require Americans to present, in person, their proof of citizenship when they register or update their registration. The most common reason to update voter registration is a change of address. On average, Americans move 12 times in their life, with younger and older Americans moving more frequently than those who are middle-aged. Requiring in-person registration would disenfranchise millions of citizens, including 60 million rural Americans who would face great obstacles when trying to register. CAP found that for the 2500 residents of Colorado City in Mohave County, Arizona, registering to vote could require an eight-hour round trip to reach their designated election office. With the current cost of gas prices, this trip would cost $75. Gas is not the only cost, as residents would need to either use a PTO day or go without pay to make this trip happen.
Ultimately, the implementation of the SAVE Act would uproot a fairly efficient system of voter registration. The vast majority of Americans register online, through voter registration drives, or via mail. In 2022, only 5.9 percent did so in person. Limiting the methods of registration and changing the identification requirements will make it more challenging for large portions of the American population to exercise their right to vote. All of this being done in the name of preventing non-citizens from voting is absurd. In 2022, a comprehensive audit of Georgia’s voter rolls found 20 noncitizens registered to vote out of 8.2 million.
Conclusion
With these legislative items likely moving in the coming months, Democrats in both chambers must continue to stand united in opposition to the Trump-led Republican agenda that seeks to further hurt Americans, the broader economy, and our democracy.