With Congress poised to vote on key budget measures, this legislative summer could be among the most productive in years — or a massive train wreck.
Abigail SpanbergerSanders last month floated the outline of a $6-trillion budget resolution that would include a wide range of progressive priorities, including lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60, expanding Medicare benefits to include dental work, hearing aids and glasses, and spending billions to combat climate change.The Vermont progressive is a savvy legislator who knows he’ll have to jettison a lot of that to get a unanimous Democratic caucus.
Expanding coverage for dental, hearing and vision benefits doesn’t generate as much opposition, but wouldn’t satisfy many progressives, who see lowering the eligibility age as a first step toward Medicare for all.Black Democratic lawmakers from the South have a different priority. Many of them, including Rep.of South Carolina, a major Biden ally, want to help low-income people in the 12 red states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
The refusal to expand has left several million people, mostly in Texas and Florida, many of them Black or Latino, without coverage — too poor to get subsidized coverage under Obamacare, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid under their home states’ stringent rules. The White House has its own healthcare priority — extending a provision of the COVID-19 bill that lowers Obamacare premiums for middle-income families. That’s cut costs for hundreds of thousands of consumers this year, but it carries a hefty price tag.
Who gets priority: the elderly, low-income Southerners, or middle-income families? Odds are, the reconciliation bill, even at a cost of trillions of dollars over the next decade, won’t be able to take care of all three.Similar tough choices will confront negotiators on climate policy, housing, child care and other programs.
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