“My hope,” Congressman John McGuire says of HR1, the budget bill he voted for last May, “is that it’ll put jet fuel on our economy.”
“There’s a lot of incentives for energy,” he says. “You know, we were on the way to being energy-independent in President Trump’s first administration, and then as soon as the Biden administration got in, they cut [drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge], and instead of making money on fuel or being energy independent, we became dependent on other nations.”
The government’s own statistics say McGuire’s wrong. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States has consistently exported more fossil fuels than it imports since 2019. In 2024, under then-president Joe Biden, both total oil exports and the gap between exports and imports reached record highs. (We invited the congressman and his staff to respond to apparent factual errors or disputed data in his statements, but they declined.)
“This second term, second administration, President Trump, and this HR1 is working towards not just energy independence, but energy dominance,” McGuire says. “You know, if you can lower fuel costs, it makes everything cheaper. You can produce your products on a farm cheaper. You can get them to market cheaper. And it helps lower costs and save money.”
On March 5, 2026, the day before McGuire made those comments, the national price of gasoline averaged $3.21 per gallon. By May 15, in the wake of Trump launching a war with Iran without congressional approval, Iran’s closure of tanker traffic through the crucial Strait of Hormuz spiked gas prices more than 40 percent to $4.52 per gallon. As of June 15, even as prices eased, the national average of $4.06 per gallon remained 26 percent higher, with Virginia averaging $3.80.
Who will HR1 help most?
“Americans are expecting the largest tax return in history,” McGuire says, “I think about $1,000 more per average family. … There’s a lot of confusion out there where people ought to read the bill, actually read the bill, and it helps the average person. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime.”
A June 2025 analysis by the Tax Policy Center suggested that HR1 would cut taxes for households earning $35,000 or less per year by 0.8 percent of their after-tax income. Families in the next quintile up would get a 1.1 percent cut. Households making between $67,000 and $119,000 would see a 2.4 percent cut, roughly $1,800 a year. Families making between $460,000 and $1.1 million receive a 4.3 percent cut, while the very richest Americans, making $5 million or more a year, would receive a 3.3 percent cut.
If those projections are correct, U.S. Census data shows that most households in Virginia’s 5th District will see fewer benefits from the bill’s tax cuts.
As of February 2025, 25 percent of VA-5 households made less than $35,000 per year, while 36 percent made less than $50,000. Both represent the third-highest percentages for low-income households out of Virginia’s 11 Congressional districts. Around 28.5 percent of VA-5 households earned between $75,000 and $150,000.
In contrast, 18.3 percent of VA-5 households made more than $150,000 per year, and 9.6 percent made more than $200,000. In both categories, VA-5 ranks seventh out of 11 districts.
Where does our money go?
C-VILLE asked McGuire why HR1 cuts health care for Americans while spending tens of billions to build a network of vast concentration camps for immigrants, and while the President’s budget request for 2026 calls for an unprecedented $1.5 trillion — 42 percent more than the previous year — for the military. As an overall priority, we asked him, why is it more important to build new prisons and planes and tanks and bombs, rather than help Americans see a doctor? How does that put America first?
“We should all be united in support of our brave men and women serving our nation in Operation Epic Fury,” McGuire says, referring to the U.S. attacks on Iran that McGuire claims were necessary to prevent Iran from building and using nuclear weapons. “This is not a time for politics. … We must support our troops.”
He also blames undocumented immigrants for weakening America’s health care system. “Every illegal alien that comes into this country and uses Medicaid benefits is taking benefits
away from vulnerable, needy American citizens. That’s why [HR1] took a strong step
forward to stop illegal aliens from abusing our health care system. It’s wrong, it needs to stop,
and it’s the reason why we must spend money to enforce the law. We must take care of our
American citizens first.”
Undocumented immigrants were already legally ineligible for Medicaid under federal law. The only exception was for emergency care, where they’d have to meet the same income standards for Medicaid as U.S. citizens. Between 2017 and 2023, this spending represented 1 percent or less of Medicaid’s expenses each year. Seven states, not including Virginia, have also chosen to expand their health care safety net to all residents without spending federal money.
Legal immigrants are only eligible for Medicaid in certain cases, often after a five-year waiting period. HR1 removes that eligibility for multiple groups of legal immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers.
“It’s not like you stop spending money on defense or law enforcement to redirect it to health care,” McGuire says. “As soon as you take your foot off the gas, you invite a whole host of problems across the board, including in health care. As a lawmaker, my job is to figure out how to balance multiple priorities and work on each at the same time. I’m sure you know, we spend over twice as much money on health care as defense.”
Analysis from the progressive Institute for Policy Studies found that in 2025, the average American paid $5,852.77 in taxes for health care, including $2,491.64 for Medicaid and $2,207.79 for Medicare. That’s 44 percent more than the $4,049.35 per-person tax bill for the U.S. military, including $1,869.58 for Pentagon contractors.
If HR1’s cuts hold health care spending constant in 2026, and military spending rises 42 percent as Trump has requested, Americans will end up spending only 1.7 percent more on health care this year than they do on war.
Who’s really paying for HR1?
The left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy added together the total tax implications of the Trump administration’s policies, all of which McGuire supports: tariffs, the tax changes in HR1, and its removal of tax credits that made health care plans on ACA exchanges more affordable.
In total, ITEP estimates that these policies cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans by $117 billion. ITEP says that’s enough to buy every Major League Baseball team combined, or just slightly less than the annual budgets of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, NASA, and the EPA put together.
While richer Americans benefit, ITEP says the poor and middle class will partially foot their bill. Overall taxes will increase for all but the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans in 2026. The steepest hikes will hit the poorest 20 percent, who’ll pay 3.1 percent more on incomes no greater than $27,000 per year. In contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent get a 0.4 percent cut.
ITEP estimates that in Virginia, the middle 60 percent of the state’s population will see a tax increase of $940 for 2026.
Lawyer Stephanie Cangin says McGuire’s “math isn’t mathing.” Her monthly ACA premiums jumped 67 percent, from around $560 to more than $950, after McGuire voted to end the tax credits that kept her plan more affordable.
“Have you seen the prices of everything?” she said in late March. “That’s assuming that everything goes to plan, that you know, the economy gets better according to their predictions, which it’s not, given the fact that we’re now in a war in the Middle East. You know, the cost of gas has gone up by, what, over $1 a gallon lately. If you’re spending basically $30 extra a week on gas, that’s basically the $1,800 a year, right there, isn’t it?”
“Given the fact that groceries are more expensive, gas is more expensive, how does he make it work for those of us [whose] increases are not covered by an $1,800 a year tax refund?” she asks. “It’s going to be over $2,500 extra that I’m paying, even if you take the $1,800 off.”
