In the Senate, a new bipartisan deal has emerged, which would extend critical Obamacare bailout payments to insurance companies for an additional two years. However, Conservative lawmakers in both the House and the Senate are working overtime to defeat this new threat.
Upon learning of the scheme – cooked up by Sen Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray – Chairman of the powerful Republican Study Committee (RSC), Mark Walker, dismissed the Senate plan, saying he would reject, “anything propping [ObamaCare] up is only saving what Republicans promised to dismantle,”
Senate Democrats, on the other hand, hailed the deal and considered it to be a perfect proposal, and are screaming for Republicans to pass this stop-gap bailout measure immediately. Democrats are especially supportive of the deal because it contains numerous so-called “anti-sabotage” measures.
These destructive, and dangerous, “anti-sabotage” measures would prevent the Trump Administration from doing anything that the Obama Administration didn’t do, in terms of enforcement of regulations and legal understandings of definitions. They claim that tying the hands of the President, over a disastrous law is a “bipartisan” measure, born of “compromise.” Democrats are born subversives.
Illustrating the point, Senate Democratic Leader, Chuck Schumer said, “The president had been sabotaging [ObamaCare] and the agreement would undo much of that sabotage. So overall we are very pleased with this agreement.”
While Speaker Paul Ryan did not release any statement on the deal, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did hail the deal as “good news for families across America.”
Just last week, President Trump announced that insurance bailout payments would halt, arguing on Constitutional grounds that the Administration (and Obama Administration) was not given the authority by Congress to enact such a bailout program for the failing Obamacare insurance schemes.
Representative Mark Meadows, Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said that there were many elements of the Alexander-Murray compromise that are unacceptable, and made it clear that he and his caucus would only support legislation that lowers costs, introduces short=term health insurance plans, and expands health savings accounts.
He also mentioned, including the lower costs, that the short-term health insurance plans and expanding health savings accounts as an elements that could be added to the deal.
However, Senator Lamar Alexander remains optimistic about his bill, saying, “Hopefully we will be giving Sen. McConnell and Sen. Schumer legislation co-sponsored by a significant number of Republicans and Democrats later this week, and then we can see where it goes from there,” he had said.
