Dems Have Big Health Care Demands in Budget Battle, But Will GOP Accede?

As Congress faces an end-of-September deadline to fund the federal government and avoid a shutdown, Democrats are making big demands on health care—including undoing Medicaid reforms and extending COVID-era tax credits.

Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, D-Mich., joined fellow Democrats at a press conference Thursday in demanding an extension of expiring health care premium tax credits instituted under then-President Joe Biden.

“We are standing at a precipice, where almost 20 million people across this country are about to lose a health care tax cut,” said Rivet. “I have authored a letter where we saw 36 Democratic battleground members sign on, calling on leadership and calling on Republicans to join us in reinstating the [Affordable Care Act] tax credit.”

Those enhanced tax credits have emerged as a main issue for Democrats, many of whom are seeking to use their shutdown leverage to force Republicans to extend them before they expire at the end of the year.

The credits were introduced during Biden’s administration under the American Rescue Plan Act to subsidize the cost of health care premiums as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then were further extended, and set to expire at the end of 2025 by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—which no Republican voted for.

The Democrat legislation expanded the reach of the health care tax credit to higher earners, while also boosting the savings it provided.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., while not ruling out an extension, has signaled he’s not a fan of the policy and doesn’t feel a need to address it in the seven-week stopgap funding bill he is pushing to keep the government open.

A shutdown could lead to federal employees not being paid and federal government services being cut off.

“They don’t expire until the end of the year, and so we have until December to figure that all out,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “Republicans have concerns about those policies, if you look at how much they’ve been abused … . People make $600,000 a year and get a government subsidy for their health care.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)

The Daily Signal asked McDonald Rivet if she thought Democrats should demand an extension be added to the seven-week spending bill, and what she thought of Johnson saying that discussion can wait.

“It’s easy to say that the discussion can wait when you’re not worried about paying your premium payments, but people are going to get these bills now,” she told The Daily Signal. 

“What’s important is that we stand with the American people, and we fix this right now,” she continued, saying that the extension cannot “get caught in the various morass of what’s happening in Congress—processes, by the way, that most American families don’t know anything about … . We just have to move. The rest of it is just political mumbo-jumbo that we hear out of Congress.”

A reporter then asked a colleague, Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., if Democrats would shut down the government over the issue. Democrats have shutdown leverage in the Senate, where Republicans would need at least seven votes from their caucus to bring a spending bill to a vote.

“That’s the Republicans’ choice,” Horsford replied. “They control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They have the power, but they also have the choice, and it’s because of the cuts to health care that we are facing this dire situation with a potential Republican shutdown.”

But it appears that even if Democrats had their demands on the extension fulfilled by Republicans, that would not guarantee that the government remains open—perhaps a primary reason why Republican leadership is not so eager to attempt a deal on the matter.

Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev. (Jemal Countess via Getty Images)

Horsford, pressed further by reporters on whether resolving that issue would avert a shutdown, laid out a laundry list of additional health care grievances.

“On top of the premium tax credits, you’ve got the cuts to Medicaid, you’ve got the cuts to cancer research, you’ve got the cuts to [the National Institutes of Health], you’ve got the defunding of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” he said. “You’ve got the dismantling of community health centers and rural hospitals, like the ones that I represent—two in Nevada—that could close. So, it’s not about one piece.”

If Democrats do get a deal on the tax credit, it would be to the chagrin of many fiscal conservatives.

“Look, the bottom line is that if the Democrats wanted them to last forever. They should have put that in the bill,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., previously told The Daily Signal. “COVID is over. The Democrats’ law is going to expire, and I think it should expire. It’s too expensive to renew.”

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