Truly worth reading this entire article. This issue spells BIG trouble for the GOP.
Shutdown Fight Reopens Debate in G.O.P. Over Health Care
The spending showdown has highlighted Republicans’ failure to produce an alternative to Obamacare, which many of them assail but concede is too politically risky to undo.
nytimes.com
The federal shutdown that is nearing its fourth week with no end in sight carries plenty of political risk for Democrats, who Republicans have accused of refusing to fulfill their responsibility to fund the government.
But it has also thrust President Trump and the G.O.P. onto the defensive on health care, an issue that has long been a major weakness for the party.
Democrats in Congress are holding fast to their position that they will not agree to a spending deal unless Republicans include an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits that would stave off premium increases and the loss of coverage for millions of Americans.
In doing so, they have forced the G.O.P. to wrestle publicly with its divisions about what to do with the health care law, which most Republicans revile but many recognize would be impossible to unravel without bringing political disaster to their party.
Some hard-line Republicans are still pressing to repeal Obamacare outright, while others concede it is unwise to do so without a clear plan of what to do instead — something that their party has long discussed but has never been able to agree upon. Mr. Trump, who told Republicans in 2023 to “never give up” in seeking to repeal the 2010 health law, has yet to clearly articulate what he favors instead.
For now, Republican leaders in Congress have mostly opted to try to change the conversation, insisting that they have a health care plan but declining to describe what it is.
“This is not a health care fight,” Speaker Mike Johnson insisted in a television interview last week when discussing the shutdown impasse. Democrats, he added, “have created a red herring. The subsidies don’t expire until the end of the year. They grabbed that issue from the end of the year and pulled it back into September.”
Whether or not Mr. Johnson wants to have a health care debate, the prolonged shutdown has forced him and his colleagues to defend their opposition to tax credits that are popular across the political spectrum.
Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, for instance, told Punchbowl News on Friday that he would vote against extending the tax credits because they would be used to “bail out insurance companies.”
But the majority of people who receive the subsidies live in Republican congressional districts. Fourteen House Republicans, including many of the party’s most vulnerable members who represent swing districts, have signed on to legislation re-upping the tax credits until January 2027. Several G.O.P. senators have signaled a desire to extend them.
At the same time, some members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus are once again calling to repeal Obamacare outright, a stance that thrills Democrats and that many G.O.P. strategists concede is politically disastrous.
</snip> Read the rest here: nytimes.com |
