Michael F. Cannon
As the United States government barrels toward a debt crisis, both House and Senate Republicans seem content to keep forcing taxpayers to overpay for low-quality health care. Senate Republicans especially are blindfolding the passengers while slamming on the gas.
Former President Biden went on a health care spending spree. He created Obamacare premium subsidies for households earning up to $600,000 per year. He opened the floodgates to improper enrollment in Obamacare. He increased Medicare spending by 14 percent and Medicaid spending by 20 percent over the pre-Biden baseline—that is, new spending above and beyond the typical year-to-year increases. The House Republicans’ budget might at least reduce annual growth in Medicaid spending from 6 percent to 3 percent; by the 10th year of the budget window, it might just barely eliminate the Medicaid portion of the Biden Bump.
The Senate GOP budget is an effort to rescue Biden’s spending spree. Obamacare subsidies for those earning up to $600,000 would stay. Biden‘s Medicaid and Medicare spending increases would stay. And Senate Republicans would accomplish all this through what is perhaps the largest, most dishonest, and most shameful budget gimmick in US history.
Decades ago, Congress enacted budget rules to prevent runaway deficits. But no Congress can bind future Congresses. Profligate legislators have rewritten those rules, including by subterfuge. The result is a record federal debt equal in size to the entire US economy, which Congress increases by another 6 percent of GDP each year.
The Senate GOP budget would rescue Joe Biden’s spending spree. But Senate Republicans don’t want to face accountability for that decision. So they devised a novel and massive subterfuge that would enable them to pass their irresponsible budget with fewer votes and would effectively throw all congressional budget rules out the window.
Their subterfuge is literally to pretend that tax and spending laws that Congress has already passed aren’t real. Senate Republicans want to pretend that Congress has already renewed Biden’s spending spree, that Congress has already cut taxes, and that the federal debt is already heading as high as Senate Republicans want to raise it. None of those things are true, of course. But if the Senate passes a resolution that pretends they are, Republicans can enact those policies without facing accountability from voters. After all, if those things have already happened, there’s no need to cast unpleasant votes for the tax increases and spending cuts necessary to pay for them. Senate Republicans’ phony “policy baseline” is perhaps the largest, most dishonest, and most shameful budget gimmick in US history.
The United States government is heading toward a debt crisis. The House Republican budget would keep barreling down that road. Senate Republicans are blindfolding the passengers while slamming on the gas.
When a debt crisis arrives, it will bring drastic cuts to federal health programs. Not reductions in the rate of growth. Actual, deep cuts. Mostly to Medicaid. Democrats who continually expand government health programs and Republicans who continually expand federal debt are putting the health care of low-income patients in a precarious situation.