How the G.O.P. Bill Saves Money: Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork

Low-income Americans would lose health coverage and government food assistance on an unprecedented scale under the giant Republican policy bill, according to outside analysts.

But to hear President Trump and Republican lawmakers describe the bill as it nears a vote in the Senate, it cuts no benefits at all.

“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you’re not going to feel any of it,” Mr. Trump said Thursday at the White House.

That claim rests on a maneuver embedded throughout the sprawling legislation: Instead of explicitly reducing benefits, Republicans would make them harder to get and to keep. The effect, analysts say, is the same, with millions fewer Americans receiving assistance. By including dozens of changes to dates, deadlines, document requirements and rules, Republicans have turned paperwork into one of the bill’s crucial policy-making tools, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to help offset their signature tax cuts.

“A lot of currently eligible people are actually going to lose benefits,” said Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, who studies the effects of administrative burdens. “Not because they’re ineligible, but because they can’t handle the set of massive roadblocks Republicans are putting in their way.”

Here are a few specific examples of new tasks people would be asked to complete if the bill became law:

• Instead of allowing states to use existing information to verify citizenship and income for people trying to qualify for Obamacare subsidies, those individuals would be required to submit documents and would have less time to apply.

• Individuals using Medicaid would need to prove they are eligible for the program twice a year instead of annually.

• “Able-bodied” Americans aged 60-64 on food assistance would be required for the first time to meet work requirements.

A Republican plan originally in the bill that would have erected new bureaucracy for the earned-income tax credit — requiring low-income families to prove the eligibility of their qualifying children every year — was removed from the legislation after the Senate parliamentarian said it violated Senate rules.