It’s Day 24 of the government shutdown. There’s still no resolution in sight to this crisis.
James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff and one of the top advisers to President Donald Trump, has an extremely broad portfolio in the Trump administration. He oversees legislative, political and public affairs.
Blair was our guest on Fly Out Day Thursday for what may be one of our newsiest interviews so far. There are two topics that we want to focus on:
1) The White House isn’t interested at all in extending the enhanced premium Obamacare tax credits at the center of the shutdown fight. In speaking with Blair, it doesn’t seem as if Trump is anywhere close to folding or beginning negotiations with Democrats (Trump is leaving for an extended Asia trip tonight.) Echoing a line used frequently by Hill Republicans, Blair dismissed the ACA credits as “subsidies to insurance companies.”
The White House is talking about an unspecified plan to broadly overhaul health care policy after the government reopens. This would be a herculean task that Republicans have failed on multiple times during the past 15 years.
2) Blair also said that Trump will dig into his own political coffers to boost Republicans in 2026. Trump controls hundreds of millions of dollars in political cash. In fact, Blair said Trump has secretly been spending money in political races around the country already. We talked to Blair about that, the Texas Senate GOP primary, Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) reelection and more.
Health care. Let’s start with this: We’re skeptical by nature and remain so in this case. But the White House and Speaker Mike Johnson say that they want to use the fight over the expiring Obamacare premium credits to launch a push to overhaul health care.
Most of the House and Senate GOP leadership think the idea is absurd. Health care has been a loser issue for Republicans for more than a decade.
But what’s extraordinarily clear is that the Trump administration has no interest in extending the expiring Obamacare subsidies, a decision that will impact millions of Americans.
“These insurance subsidies, and to be clear, these are subsidies to insurance companies,” Blair said. “They don’t actually go to people. They’ve been artificially masking the cost of premiums. OK? They put these in during the Covid era. … [Democrats] voted not once, but twice, to make this program temporary that we’re now discussing and for them to expire.”
Blair added that “Democrats have created a sideshow around” the subsidies “because they don’t want to admit there’s bigger issues that they’re not focused on, and two, that they are the ones that set up this ticking time bomb to begin with.”
The political impact of failing to extend the ACA subsidies could be seismic. Health care premiums will skyrocket, and Republicans could get the blame.
But Blair made the case that Trump wants to spend his time and political capital on putting together a broader health care overhaul.
“We’re not just talking about Obamacare,” Blair said. “We’re not even talking about the repeal of Obamacare. We’re talking about making health care more affordable.”
“The president wants to make life affordable for people, he wants to make health care affordable for people. He’s been talking about this for years. … [O]pen the government. Let’s find a solution. Let’s figure out what we’re going to do together, but you have to open the government.”
It seems feasible that Trump will push the GOP-controlled Congress to put together some sort of health-care overhaul package. This could be a big political risk — and time suck.
Every time Republicans get involved in health care policy, it ends up being a mess. Republicans haven’t coalesced around a broad health care policy since Democrats started crafting Obamacare in 2009. That said, there are a number of health care extenders that could be packaged together and branded as an overhaul effort.
In addition, Blair said that there will be a “number” of publicly traded pharmaceutical companies who’ll be “coming to the table” to “get the cost of prescription drugs down in the United States.”
“We’d like to take action [on] that on Capitol Hill, the president’s very focused on the cost of health care,” Blair said.
Some Republicans are already pushing the GOP leadership to use the party-line budget reconciliation process as the vehicle for health care policy, arguing that Democrats aren’t interested in providing the requisite 60 votes for a bipartisan deal.
As we scooped in Thursday’s PM edition, several GOP senators pitched Senate Majority Leader John Thune on this during a closed-door meeting this week. Republican leadership has been cool to the idea of a “Reconciliation 2.0” effort.
Blair on politics. Blair is also the key player within Trump’s orbit on political issues. You should watch the whole episode because Blair gets into a lot of topics, but here’s a brief summary.
– Blair said it’s “very important” for Trump that Republicans keep control of the House and Senate. He made the case that the “macro markers of the political environment” are good for Trump and Republicans: voter registration, polling and the generic ballot.
– Blair said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) “appears to have done a good job of pulling his polling numbers up from where they were a few months ago.” He added that Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) jumping into the Senate GOP primary was a “wild card.” Trump will spend his own political money in Texas “if it’s absolutely necessary” in order to keep that seat in Republican hands, Blair added.
– Interestingly enough, Blair said that Trump is “spending already” in races across the country.
– Blair doesn’t agree with the Indiana Senate GOP leadership that redistricting can’t pass in the Hoosier State. “I think we’ll see how Indiana continues to evolve, but I don’t think that’s a correct assessment,” Blair said.
