Deal...Or No Deal?
Wishful Thinking...?
With lawmakers back in Washington, press reports yesterday focused on whether there was an emerging agreement to reinstate the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that expired last week. Apart from the policy question of whether Congress should reinstate the enhanced subsidies (spoiler alert: it shouldn’t), there’s the separate political question of whether Congress will do so.
And on that count, the signals don’t appear very promising. Just look at all the quotes from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle NOT named (Sens.) Susan Collins (R-ME) or Bernie Moreno (R-OH):
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL): “Still some major stumbling blocks.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD): “They’re working hard trying to find something that threads those various needles, but as of right now…I’m not aware at least that there’s a landing spot just yet.”
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA): “There are already restrictions due to the Hyde amendment [on taxpayer funding of abortion]…That [i.e., going further] would be a poison pill, for sure.”
Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), on ending the zero-dollar premiums that have encouraged fraud: “8 million people would get a rate hike immediately….I don’t know how you explain that that’s affordability to people.”
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) on zero-dollar premiums: “All of us [Democrats] prefer not to have that….For most states like Vermont, it won’t have a detrimental impact. In Georgia, it might, and that’s a concern for us, so we’re trying to figure out how to address that.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on zero-dollar premiums: “The data shows that you lose a lot of people at the lowest income levels when you do that.”
More Wyden on zero-dollar premiums: “It’s an example that the No. 1 issue today is affordability, and nobody has really walked through what it’s going to mean for those 8 million people.”
Shaheen on the Hyde Amendment: “No need to come to a compromise” given current law, which Republicans and pro-life groups have consistently derided as a sham accounting gimmick.
Wyden on the Hyde Amendment: “People who are looking at Hyde are playing with fire. There is not support in this country for throwing Hyde in the trash can or rolling it back.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who has shown interest in reviving the enhanced subsidies, expressed the sentiments best when he said that he hoped the January 15 end of open enrollment “does light the fire” for an agreement. “But I’m not seeing a lot of evidence.”
Other than Collins and Moreno—who drafted a subsidy revival amendment that sounds like it’s the basis for the bipartisan talks—and a handful of moderate Republicans in the House interested in stopping Democrats’ political attacks on them, who exactly has expressed enthusiasm for this emerging “deal?” Is it anywhere near close to 60 votes of support in the Senate, let alone 218 votes in the House?
I’m not a betting man, but when it comes to talk about this supposed “deal,” the immortal words of Lee Corso come to mind:
Then again, when it comes to Democrats teasing a supposed agreement, only to walk away at the last minute, Sens. Collins and Moreno might soon feel more like a certain famous cartoon character: