Sen. Mark Kelly says vote on healthcare subsidies alone won't end shutdown
By: Faith Wardwell (POLITICO)
The Schumer shutdown is NOT about the cost of healthcare. Democrats have shutdown government because the cost of Obamacare insurance is unaffordable. Democrats intentionally created a high-cost cliff when they rammed the ACA down the country's throat. (Or shoved it up the other end.)
Democrats are not going to fix anything by lying about the problem. Their political narrative is an outright fabrication that Democrats hope will mislead the public and divert attention away from the unfixable flaw in the ACA law. Throwing more money at unaffordable healthcare is a stupid way to try to bring down costs.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As the government shutdown drags into its third week, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said Sunday that a vote from Republican lawmakers to extend healthcare subsidies will not alone be enough to reopen the government, instead calling on the GOP to pledge to help fix the problem.
“We need a real negotiation and we need a fix,” Kelly told host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We need this corrected for the American people. For so many people, their health care is running toward a cliff, and if we don’t fix this, it’s going to go right over it, and having some vote without an assured outcome.”
Sunday marks the government’s 12th day of the shutdown, and Democrats have maintained throughout the fight that they’d vote to reopen the government if Republicans agreed to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies — their central goal in the standoff.
Kelly went on to condemn the politicization of the shutdown, saying it’s “not about winners and losers,” and maintaining that the stalemate over reopening the government is about bringing down the cost of Americans’ healthcare.
“In this situation, we’ve got 2 million Americans that are likely to lose their health care because they’re not going to be able to afford these premium increases,” he said. “And I think it’s important for all Americans to know this fight right now over this government shutdown is about one thing — it’s about the cost of their healthcare.”
In a separate interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Kelly continued to criticize President Donald Trump’s explicit blaming of Democrats throughout the shutdown, saying the focus of the stalemate should instead be on the Americans impacted by the shutdown and the subsequent layoffs carried out by the Trump administration.
“He is trying to politicize the federal government in a way, and he’s picking winners and losers,” Kelly told host Dana Bash in the interview. “These are people with families, and they have mortgages and they have to pay rent. They have to put food on the table. We’ve never seen a president do anything like this before.”
He continued to decry the firing of federal workers, after the Trump administration announced Friday that it would begin laying off employees from some agencies as the result of the ongoing shutdown. Kelly said the administration did “not have to do this,” and urged GOP leaders to meet Democrats at the negotiating table to reach an agreement on healthcare subsidies.
“They do not have to punish people that shouldn’t find themselves in this position,” he said. “And the reason they’re here is because this administration is about to drive our health care system for 23 million people over a cliff when these subsidies go away.”
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Lies, falsehoods, untruths. Democrats shut down the government over the cost of insurance in their own big-government program that provides the most benefit to financial institutions. The shutdown shines a spotlight on Democrats' stupid agenda to fix every problem by just throwing more money at them.
Schumer's shutdown proves the ACA just kicked the can without addressing the real problem of for-profit healthcare. Using the government as a sugar daddy hasn't made healthcare more affordable. And it has turned the blue portion of the electorate into prostitutes.
The average government subsidy for each ACA insurance enrollee is about $6,400. The ACA law allows insurance companies to scrape as much as $1,280 of that $6,400 government subsidy for administrative costs and profits. After Democrats' generous expansion of Premium Tax Credits the number of enrollees has increase to 24 million. Do the math. That means up to $30.7 billion in public funds is being handed to insurance companies to cover their operating costs and profits.
Democrats have created an ACA program that provides risk-free grifting for financial institutions. The ACA program doesn't provide any incentives for lowering the cost of healthcare.
Republicans own every branch of government, but it's all the Dems fault.. Classic.. LOL
Time for a civics education.
In order to reopen the government, there is a requirement for 60 votes in the Senate in the affirmative. Republicans currently have 53 votes, needing 7 Democrats to allow the government to reopen.
Schumer refuses to allow this to happen. Republicans passed a clean CR several weeks ago. Democrats passed the same CR 6/7 months ago, but all of a sudden, it's but Truuuuuuuuuuuuuump.
This is all on democrats.
And that government is becoming smaller. That's a Republican accomplishment, isn't it? Promise made, promise kept?
Remind us again how many Republicans voted for the Affordable Care Act? At one time that was a favorite talking point for Democrats.
You do realize that the ACA was passed solely by Democrats in both the House and the Senate, no Republican voted for the ACA.
And then the Inflation Reduction Act which expanded the subsidies for the ACA (which are the subsidies that are ending the end of December as per the Inflation Reduction Act) was also passed by Democrats without any Republicans voting for.
The Democrats definitely caused this problem. The expiration of the expanded subsidies has been a known issue for quite a while. Why didn't the Democrats do anything before this?
It's been pointed out several times that a 60 vote requirement in the senate is in effect and the Republicans do not have 60 seats in the Senate. If all Republicans in the Senate are voting yes on the CR then it's obvious that it's the Democrats that are keeping the government closed.
Lastly, how many times when the Democrats were in power did they demand Republicans pass a 'clean' CR to keep government open? If a clean CR was important and valid to Democrats in the past and the underlying issue they are crying about now was caused by the Democrats, why are they keeping the government closed?
Fascinating how "not buying you something" is "punishment".