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The Senate is gearing up for a vote on extending expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, but a tense debate over restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions is proving a major roadblock on the path to a bipartisan healthcare solution.
Broadly, lawmakers in the upper chamber do not want to see the subsidies expire by the end of the year, given the political ramifications and expected leaps in healthcare premiums that would come should they lapse.
But Republicans demand that Hyde Amendment protections, which prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions, be added to an extension of the subsidies. Senate Democrats view that as a non-starter.
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“It’s a sticky situation,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told Fox News Digital.
The Hyde Amendment was first enacted in 1976, and has routinely been added to funding bills in the years since to ensure that federal dollars don’t prop up abortions. The issue has become a political third rail in the ongoing healthcare debate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged that it was a tricky situation and how difficult carving a path forward on extending the subsidies would be.
“Well, I think dealing with Hyde is a big issue,” Thune said. “And so, obviously, for both sides we’ll have to figure out how to make that work, and we’ll see on that. I don’t know the answer.”
The Senate is set to vote on Senate Democrats’ subsidy proposal next week, which comes after Thune’s guarantee that there would be a vote in his bid to end the government shutdown last month.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., unveiled Democrats’ proposal on Thursday, which would largely be a clean extension of the subsidies for three years. Republicans have panned it as unserious, and the legislation is expected to fail.
“Republicans have spent more time kicking low-income people off health insurance and raising costs for those who stay covered, than on doing anything to lower premiums,” Schumer said. “They’ve riddled their plan with poison pills that would ban abortion nationwide.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that the underlying framework of Obamacare comports with Hyde Amendment restrictions but that Democrats were insisting that the enhanced premium subsidies, which were passed during the COVID-19 pandemic under former President Joe Biden, not be covered by the abortion language,
“We have never, ever agreed to taxpayer funding of abortions in the Republican Party. We’re not going to start now, and they know that,” he said. “So it may very well be, unfortunately, that that might be their reason for not wanting to do anything on health care because they think it’s a really good midterm election issue.”
Key negotiators that helped end the shutdown on both sides of the aisle are still trying to find a bipartisan solution, but talks have virtually ground to a halt over issues with the Hyde Amendment protections.
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Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, was one of the Senate Democratic caucus members that crossed the aisle to end the shutdown. He told Fox News Digital he wouldn’t comment on the Hyde Amendment back and forth, but he cast a grim outlook on how bipartisan talks were going.
“I don’t know if progressing is a word I would use,” King said. “I would say that they are ongoing, and we’ll see if we can find some resolution.”
The Obamacare subsidies were a driving force behind Senate Democrats’ shutdown posture, and with the public unveiling of their proposal, it has some Senate Republicans wondering what the government shutdown was even for.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala, who was one of main figures in building a bipartisan bridge to reopen the government, told Fox News Digital that it was clear Schumer wanted to use healthcare as a “political issue in an election.”
“Looking at it that way, I mean that you would care more about making sure that taxpayers have to fund abortions than you do about these subsidies shows you their priorities are clearly, in my opinion, out of whack,” Britt said.
For now, the only option on the table is Democrats’ proposal. Republicans are still trying to land on what exactly they want to do with the Obamacare issue. Funneling subsidy money into Healthcare Savings Accounts rather than to insurance companies has become a strong contender, but Senate Republicans still haven’t made their play call.
“I think that, my assumption is, if this is what they’re going to do next week, when it fails, then we will have a serious conversation about a real solution,” Thune told Fox News Digital. “We haven’t decided yet exactly what we’re going to do, but what that signals though, evidences, is they’re just not serious.”
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