Idaho Republicans blame Dems for shutdown, but pain still coming | Opinion

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, both R-Idaho, spent some time complaining about a recent Idaho Statesman editorial that called them out for not negotiating with Democrats over health care subsidies, a sticking point that spurred the longest federal government shutdown in history.

In the end, eight senators caved without getting any concessions, essentially sending the signal that the 43-day shutdown was completely fruitless.

Republicans reportedly promised to take up a bill in December to extend so-called enhanced premium tax credits for health care.

Don’t hold your breath.

The party that wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act altogether and replace it with nothing isn’t going to negotiate in good faith. If you believe the Republicans are going to come to the negotiating table in December to help low-income and middle-class Americans afford health care, we’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

At the heart of the debate are so-called enhanced health care tax credits, which raised the income cap for eligibility and also lowered the maximum share of income that individuals have to pay for plans across all levels of income.

Republican talking points said Democrats wanted to “extend the Biden COVID bonuses” and focused only on the income cap of 400% of the poverty level.

Not only does that ignore the part of the credits that benefited low-income families, but it also mischaracterized them as a COVID relief program.

Yes, the credits were passed in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan Act, but as U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, points out, she first proposed enhancing the tax credits in 2019, through her Improving Health Insurance Affordability Act, recognizing there was a growing need under the Affordable Care Act.

Is the Affordable Care Act ideal? No, it’s not. But remember, before the Affordable Care Act, the United States was reaching crisis levels with millions of uninsured Americans going without health care, and that number was growing.

Yes, the Affordable Care Act was a Band-Aid on a wound, and it would have been much better if we had passed a single-payer universal health care system at the time, and joined every other reasonable, developed nation on the planet.

But we didn’t, and so here we are.

There are signs that Republicans get it: One of the reasons they opposed the enhanced subsidies was that it “meant continuing to send billions of dollars to insurance companies,” as Crapo put it. But what they fail to recognize is that without the credits, any kind of insurance will become unaffordable, and many will go without.

The credits are set to expire at the end of the year. Around 4 million Americans are projected to lose coverage starting next year, according to the New York Times, and prices would go up for around 20 million more.

In Idaho, about 25,000 people are expected to lose coverage because of the expiring credits, and 100,000 Idahoans overall will see some sort of spike in their insurance rates, according to previous Statesman reporting.

In a letter to the editor, Crapo said renewing these credits would have increased the federal deficit by several billion dollars.

Increasing federal spending by several billion dollars on health care subsidies for low-income and middle class Americans is unacceptable to Republicans. But increasing the federal deficit by several billion dollars by cutting taxes to the ultra wealthy is perfectly acceptable. In fact, the reason they can’t afford to increase spending by several billion dollars on enhanced health care subsidies is because they’ve cut taxes on the ultra wealthy as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Shaheen was one of the eight U.S. senators who agreed to sign a “clean” continuing resolution to reopen the federal government.

But she and U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said they did so only because they recognized that Republicans were unwilling to negotiate with Democrats on the tax credits.

In other words, they recognized that Republicans were coldly willing to allow SNAP benefits to be cut, federal workers to go unpaid and air travel to be disrupted in order to not negotiate. That’s why eight senators caved: They realized Republicans were unfazed by the pain they were inflicting on millions of Americans.

If Republicans don’t come to the table and negotiate with Democrats on health care come December, that pain is only going to get a whole lot worse.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.