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Passed the House on Friday, January 13, 2017
Yeas 227
Nays 198
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S.Con.Res. 3 - 2017 Budget Resolution: NO.
January 14, 2017 - Instead of a straight-forward measure to repeal Obamacare completely and to replace it with free market reforms that Republican have long advocated, Congress has instead chosen a too-
clever-by-half manipulation of the rules that I believe will make repealing Obamacare harder and slower, while further disrupting an already faltering health care market. Worse, by misusing the budget and reconciliation process, Congress has squandered its most important tools to bring spending under control before we bankrupt our country.OBAMACARE DISCUSSION:
Reconciliation does not repeal Obamacare. Rather, it mangles it and makes Republicans responsible for the ensuing market without the votes to finish the job or replace it with free-market reforms. Since Senate Democrats are unlikely to cooperate on post-reconciliation fixes, we had better be very clear what the health care system will then look like under the best-case scenario.
Obamacare subsidies will end and be replaced with tax credits. Tax penalties to enforce the individual mandate will end. Non-compliance penalties will end. Medicaid will return to its pre-Obamacare condition.
However, even though federal funds are denied for enforcement, the law will still be on the books. The guaranteed issue mandate will continue. State governments will continue to be the primary enforcers of the insurance mandates, and will still have to approve any new plans.
In those states willing to approve non-compliant plans, insurers will have to decide whether to risk civil liability for selling consumers policies that are out of compliance with federal law.
HHS does have significant latitude through the regulatory process to re-define the parameters of the essential benefits mandate, but the law will still require that the new HHS guidance is consistent with benefits found in a “typical” policy. It will still be bound by the Administrative Procedures Act that forbids changes that are considered “arbitrary and capricious.” And, ironically, this latitude will also depend on maintaining the Chevron deference doctrine.
Absent the individual mandate, the adverse selection problem will accelerate and Obamacare-compliant plan premiums will sky-rocket. The availability of non-compliant policies will depend on how much legal risk insurers are willing to assume and whether the individual state is willing to approve them.
We are taking this path solely to by-pass a Democratic filibuster (because Senate Republicans stubbornly refuse to reform cloture) and to give the new President an early victory. We need to ask ourselves how this strategy is likely to play out. The House will send a reconciliation partial-repeal bill as well as clean-up-and- replace bill to the Senate. Under intense Democratic opposition, warning that it will cause chaos in health care, the reconciliation bill will pass and the replacement bill will be blocked. Obamacare will continue to collapse. Indeed, its collapse may accelerate because of added uncertainties in the market.
Democrats have already announced what their response will be: “Republicans passed this over our objections; we warned it would destabilize your health care; it has; and we Democrats will not let them get away with half-measures to try and mask the damage they’ve done.” As public outrage builds against Republicans for “breaking the ACA,” and Republicans send reform measures over to the Senate, Democrats will block them with the refrain: “you broke it; you fix it; and this doesn’t do it.” Under increasing public pressure, Republican attrition will ultimately force Congress to abandon the effort and extend Obamacare indefinitely.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. Pass a clean bill out of the House that completely repeals Obamacare and immediately replaces it with the patient-centered system long advocated by House Republicans. As Obamacare continues its collapse and public outrage mounts against Democrats for imposing the ACA, Republicans are in a strong position to say, “We warned Obamacare would fail; it has failed; here is the reform that will save your family’s health care; but the same Senate Democrats who created this fiasco now stand in the way.” With the House having passed the rescue bill, the President calling for it and Senate Republicans clamoring to pass it, pressure on the eight hold-out Democrats would be enormous. The Senate could then force Democrats to engage in a genuine filibuster until public pressure and Democratic attrition break it. The clean bill could then go to the President within months.
BUDGET DISCUSSION
I also object to the misuse of the budget resolution for this purpose. Although it is described and intended as the pre-requisite for the reconciliation bill on Obamacare, it is nevertheless a budget resolution that maintains our current spending trajectory. Under the trajectory set by this resolution, the national debt will balloon from $20 trillion to $30 trillion over the next ten years and never balance. This poses a severe risk of a sovereign debt crisis within the decade. True, we are now beginning the 2018 budget process that can correct this trajectory – but only if the House passes it, which it failed to do last year. And it begins the 2018 budget process with Republicans having already endorsed an unsustainable fiscal course.
Now that we have a Republican president, the reconciliation bill is the most powerful tool we have to actually bring spending under control before we bankrupt our country – and we only get one per budget year. Not only is it ill-suited to repealing Obamacare, I am afraid that by using it in this fashion, we are squandering one of the last chances we have to bring mandatory spending under control before it bankrupts our country.
Source: Congressman Tom McClintock
