Democrats who forced a government shutdown for 43 days on the issue have so far not wavered from their proposal to extend the subsidies for three years, which would cost taxpayers billions of dollars, with none of the new limits that Republicans have suggested. The GOP proposal would create new health savings accounts to replace the tax credits, an idea that Democrats called “dead on arrival.”
Most Republicans have worked to get rid of Obamacare ever since it came into being back in 2010.
Maine Sen. Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, was one of those senators who eventually voted with Republicans to end the shutdown. He says he and a small group of Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans after the shutdown ended. But he said the talks became unproductive when Republicans demanded language adding new limits for abortion coverage that were a “red line” for Democrats.
“They’re going to own these increases,” King said of Republicans.
Republicans have used the looming expiration of the subsidies to renew their longstanding criticisms of Obamacare and to try, once more, to agree on what should be done. The GOP plan that the Senate will vote on Thursday would replace the tax credits with health savings accounts, an overhaul of the law that they say would put the money in the hands of consumers, not insurance companies that currently receive the current subsidies directly.
Thune announced Tuesday that the GOP conference had decided to vote on the bill led by Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee, and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, even as several Republican senators proposed alternate ideas.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has promised a vote next week. Republicans weighed different options in a conference meeting on Wednesday, with no apparent consensus.
