Congress cannot debate the extension of Obamacare subsidies before the government shuts down on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said on Sunday.
Congressional Republicans have foreseen a debate with Democrats over whether or not to continue subsidizing expanded tax credits for Obamacare health premiums since July. The credits expire at the end of the 2025 calendar year.
“We acknowledge that hopefully there’ll be some steps taken that can address the concerns the Democrats have. But you can’t do this by Tuesday, and you can’t do it while you’re holding the American people hostage with a government shutdown,” Thune said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said on CNN this week that a refusal to extend these Affordable Care Act tax credits will result in “tens of millions of Americans experiencing dramatically increased premiums, copays, and deductibles.” He called the continuing resolution bill to prevent the shutdown “reckless” and “partisan.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson sharply denounced Jeffries’s argument, telling Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning that there is “nothing partisan” about the continuing resolution. He said the legislative body has until the end of the year to debate the subsidies before they expire, saying it doesn’t need to be done now.
“The Obamacare subsidies is a policy debate that has to be determined by the end of the year, December 30th, not right now, while we’re simply trying to keep the government open,” Johnson said.
Thune said the government shutdown is “totally up to the Democrats,” pointing to the spending bill sitting in the Senate that has already been passed by the House. Thune focused his argument about the subsidies on the need for reform, saying the program was “fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“There are so many people who don’t even know they have coverage, because the payments are made directly to the insurance company. They auto-enroll people,” Thune said. “You have a lot of people who don’t even know they have coverage, so more than half of the people that have insurance through this program never filed a claim last year.
The premium tax credits were originally created with the Affordable Care Act, but enhanced under the Biden administration. A Congressional Budget Office report said the permanent extension of the enhanced credits would cost the government $383 billion, but if they permanently expire, the number of Americans without health insurance would rise by an average of 3.8 million annually to 2034.
HOUSE GOP WEIGHS WHETHER TO SAVE EXPANDED OBAMACARE TAX CREDITS
Thune echoed Johnson, saying the time for the enhanced premium tax credit debate is not right now.
“Let’s keep the government open and then figure out where we go,” Thune said.
