WASHINGTON — As Republicans spent most of the year on legislation to drastically cut taxes for the wealthy and slash Medicaid, then took a weekslong break from Washington while the government was shut down, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) continually insisted they would be able to fix a looming spike in health care costs in December.
“We have until the end of December to figure all that out,” Johnson told reporters in September.
“That’s a December policy issue,” Johnson said in October.
“That was always a December issue,” Johnson said in November.
Well, it’s December. And Republicans don’t have a solution and can’t agree among themselves about what to do.
Many GOP lawmakers outright oppose extending the subsidies, which Democrats passed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while others worry that doing nothing, and allowing Obamacare marketplace premiums for 20 million people to spike by more than 100%, on average, will hurt their party in next year’s midterm elections.
“They knew this cliff was coming and would only make the pain worse for Americans, yet they’ve chosen to do nothing, absolutely nothing. They are nowhere. They don’t even have a proposal, and the American people are running out of time,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday.
The GOP’s failure to coalesce around a solution mirrors their yearslong failure to come up with a larger plan to lower health care costs or replace Obamacare. Voters largely do not trust Republicans to deal with health care, and many of the party’s ideas are unpopular. That has left Senate Republicans up in the air about whether to even offer a plan at all.
“Republicans have always had trouble coalescing around an alternative, you might have noticed,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) quipped to reporters when asked if his party will offer a competing plan on the Senate floor next week.
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Democrats will propose a three-year clean extension of the subsidies next week in a vote on the Senate floor that they secured from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) as a condition of voting to reopen the government last month. That vote is almost certain to fail, however, due to GOP demands for reforms to the program to address fraud and to increase eligibility requirements for higher earners.
Conservative Republicans are also pushing to include language restricting funds going to abortion, which Democrats are calling a nonstarter and a backdoor attempt to ban abortion nationwide.
Republicans have also pointed out, over and over, that Democrats created the enhanced subsidies, and set their expiration date, as part of partisan legislation they passed during Joe Biden’s presidency.
“Might I remind the Democrats COVID IS OVER,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Thursday.
While the boosted subsidies were initially enacted as part of a coronavirus relief law, Democrats had long favored the idea, and the most recent extension was part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Bipartisan talks to extend the subsidies in the Senate have dragged on for months, but there’s little evidence that enough Republicans are ready to vote to extend the subsidies in any form without political cover from President Donald Trump. Trump has been mostly disengaged from the process and has dismissed voter concerns about high prices and affordability as a “hoax.” The White House floated a two-year extension of the subsidies last month, but quickly backtracked due to GOP opposition.
“Republicans have always had trouble coalescing around an alternative, you might have noticed.”
– Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas)
Speaker Johnson is reportedly working on a plan that will cobble together various Republican ideas, such as “association health plans” allowing multiple employers to purchase coverage for their workers. It’s highly unlikely the forthcoming proposals would cover as many people or be as comprehensive as Obamacare.
And a bipartisan group of House lawmakers has also been working on a bill to continue the subsidies, but with some changes to reduce their cost, such as narrower eligibility standards. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a moderate who’s involved in writing the bill, said it’s the only legislation that could possibly get the needed 218 House and 60 Senate votes.
“It’s the only product thus far that has input from the White House, the House and Senate, both Democrat and Republican,” Fitzpatrick told HuffPost.
There’s widespread skepticism in the Capitol that lawmakers will reach an agreement this month. Schumer said Democrats’ push next week for a three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies will be the last train leaving the station this year.
“Make no mistake: The vote is the last chance, the last chance before Jan. 1 to avoid the crisis they caused and bring relief to the American people,” Schumer said.
As it stands on Thursday, the bill is doomed.