Democrats coalesce around insurance subsidies as shutdown demand, Neal says
Democrats coalesce around insurance subsidies as shutdown demand, Neal says
Just a moment...
“If they try to jam something down our throats without any compromise — without any bipartisan, real, bipartisan discussion — they ain’t going to get the votes, plain and simple,” Schumer said.
Neal argued that Congress can’t wait much longer to avert the expiration of enhanced tax subsidies that help about 20 million of Americans afford health care plans offered on exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. People who receive that assistance are already being notified that the tax subsidies will end later this year, he said, with open enrollment for health insurance beginning in November.
“So you can have this huge spike in health care costs coupled with the subtraction of health care for millions of Americans,” Neal said, referring to Medicaid cuts in the GOP domestic policy bill passed in July. “And we have broad agreement that the health of the American people should be paramount in this debate.”
My god these people are terrible at politics. This neither protects our democracy, nor gives them anything to run on in the midterms. "Something bad didn't happen because of us," is almost impossible to campaign on.
Hell, they're practically protecting Republicans because now there won't be 20 million Americans who have personally experienced how wretched the Republican agenda really is. And disproportionately Republican voters!
Schumer has to go.
So you think that leaving 20 million people without healthcare is a reasonable thing to do in order to get votes?
I think when choosing what you will spend your political leverage on, particularly in an election cycle that's liable to determine whether we have free and fair elections for the foreseeable future, you pick something that 1) does good for people, 2) makes your opponent look bad, and 3) makes you look good. This proposed option only ticks one of those boxes.
Cleaning up Republicans' messes will only keep the Republicans in power, and you out, until you no longer even have the power to do that.