The fight over “Obamacare” will never go away, and it’s a looming tax battle for this year.
Allowing enhanced “Obamacare” premium tax credits to expire at the end of 2025 may not be the easy task the GOP had hoped.
Democrats expanded a refundable tax credit for low-to-moderate-income households on their health insurance in 2021 and later extended that boost to last until 2025, lining it up with the expiration of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law.
Republicans had been eyeing the expiration of these expanded tax credits over the past year. The Congressional Budget Office last year found that making the more generous credits permanent would add $335 billion to the deficit — and also add 7 million more people to marketplace plans — over 10 years.
There’s one problem for the GOP on this issue: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.).
Murkowski has signaled she’d rather not see the credits completely expire. The CBO has also reported that if Congress doesn’t extend the enhanced benefits, premiums will rise by 7.9%. Another 3.8 million Americans would go uninsured altogether, according to the report.
There would be a significant impact on Alaskans, Murkowski told us.
“For us in Alaska, that’s been a very significant help and benefit, so I’m not one that is anxious to see them expire,” Murkowski said.
More moderate Republicans in recent weeks have been expressing concern over proposed cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other aid programs. Some of them may also want to see some version of the expanded credits remain, especially if health care is getting squeezed elsewhere.
Price Check: Most House Republicans don’t like the price. They’re already under pressure to find savings wherever they can. Adding another costly tax extender to their to-do list isn’t enticing.
House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said it’s time for Republicans to “get a handle” of the Affordable Care Act’s health care costs.
“You keep extending the tax credits, like college tuition, the more you help, the higher the price goes,” Guthrie said.
Any extension of the expanded credits could be enacted through the party-line reconciliation bill or separately with Democrats. It’s difficult to pass any stand-alone tax bills, though, and it’s unlikely there would be much appetite for a tax title in an end-of-year omnibus given the reconciliation push.
In any scenario, Democrats are likely to use the impending expiration as another line of attack on the GOP over the coming months.
