The Republican Party position on health care plans has become a “no-win position,” according to a political commentator.
Mike Lillis of The Hill suggested the options laid out for the GOP by the Trump administration put the party in a difficult position of angering their influential supporters or backing a Democrat policy the party has frequently denounced.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) led the ObamaCare opposition against Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with the pair refusing to negotiate on subsidies. It led to a 43-day government shutdown, which even now a 60-40 vote has been reached, is still causing problems for Republicans.
Lillis wrote, “The deadline has put Republican leaders into a no-win position: If they extend the tax credits, they’ll go on record for the first time augmenting a Democratic law they deem noxious while infuriating a conservative base that’s spent more than 15 years trying to kill it.
“If they don’t, the out-of-pocket health costs for millions of people will skyrocket heading into next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are already at risk of losing control of the House.” Lillis went on to suggest this impasse is the reason the White House delayed its announcement on Monday for the subsidy extension.
Brendan Buck, a former House GOP leadership aide, said, “The politics of this are not a close call. With the House hanging by a thread, it is clearly in the interest of Republicans in Congress to avoid this crisis.
“Sometimes protecting the majority may mean disappointing some other members, but as a political calculation, it’s pretty straightforward. I also don’t imagine this story is over yet.”
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not weigh in on the plans specifically but did confirm Trump had been directly involved in conversations on the health care plan. She said, “Health care is a topic of discussion that’s happening very frequently and robustly inside the West Wing right now.”
“The president is very much involved in these talks, and he’s very focused on unveiling a health care proposal that will fix the system and will bring down costs for consumers,” Leavitt told reporters on Monday. “As for the details of those discussions, I’ll let the president speak for himself.”
The post ‘No-win position’: GOP careening towards crisis on health care plan appeared first on Raw Story.
