In the budget agreement announced Wednesday between Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democrat Chuck Schumer, McConnell’s negotiating position can be summed up thusly: “Give us the money we want for defense spending, and you can run the rest of the country.”
The result was a spending bonanza, with giveaways to just about every conceivable lobbying group, trade association, and special interest possible. The unseemly spectacle resembles “Oprah’s Favorite Things:” “You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! EVERYONE GETS A CAR!!!”
Except, of course, the next generation, which will get stuck with the tab for this spending spree.
Even reporters expressed frank astonishment at the bipartisan profligacy. Axios admitted that “there’s a ton of health care money in the Senate budget deal,” while Kaiser Health News noted that the agreement “appear[s] to include just about every other health priority Democrats have been pushing the past several months.”
Of course, McConnell and Schumer want to ram it through Congress and into law by Thursday evening—because we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.
Lowlights of the Health Legislation
Final text of the agreement remained unclear as of Wednesday evening, but based on press reports and draft text—which, in a sign of the bill’s popularity with special interests, circulated widely among K Street lobbyists on Wednesday—the agreement contains the following un-conservative policy measures.
Repeal of Medicare Spending Restraints: The bill would repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a board of unelected bureaucrats empowered to make rulings on Medicare spending. I noted last year that conservatives could support repealing the power given to unelected bureaucrats while keeping the restraints on Medicare spending—restraints which, once repealed, will be difficult to reinstitute.
Congressional leaders did nothing of the sort. Instead the “deal” would repeal the IPAB without a replacement, raising the deficit by $17.5 billion. Moreover, because seniors pay for a portion of Medicare physician payment spending through their Part B premium, repealing this provision without an offset would raise seniors’ out-of-pocket costs. While a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of the bill as a whole was not available as of press time Wednesday evening, this provision, on its own, would raise Medicare premiums by billions of dollars.
Big Pharma Giveaway: In a further giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry, the bill would close the Medicare Part D prescription drug “donut hole” a year earlier—that is, beginning in 2019 rather than 2020. Having failed to repeal Obamacare, Republicans apparently want to expand this portion of the law, in the hopes of attracting seniors’ votes in November’s mid-term elections.
However, as with IPAB repeal, this provision will also raise seniors’ Medicare premiums. The richer government-subsidized coverage will encourage Medicare patients to switch from cheaper generic pharmaceuticals to costlier brand-name drugs. CBO noted as much in its original score of Obamacare, saying the donut hole would raise premiums by 9 percent.
Extension of an Unreformed SCHIP Program: The bill would extend for another four years the State Children’s Health Insurance Program—a mandatory spending program that Republicans extended for six years just last month. I previously explained in detail that last month’s reauthorization failed to include at least ten different conservative reforms that Republicans previously supported. By extending the program for another four years, the “deal” would prevent conservatives from enacting any reforms for a decade.
Back in 2015, Republican aides pledged that “Republicans would like to reform and improve this program, and the next opportunity will be in two years when we have a new President.” Not only have Republicans done nothing of the sort, the additional extension will prevent this president—and potentially the next one as well—from reforming the program.
Mandatory Funding for Community Health Centers: The bill provides for $7.8 billion in mandatory spending for community health centers over the next two years, once again extending a mandatory program created by Obamacare.
Prior to Obamacare, community health centers received funding through the discretionary appropriations process every year, rather than an automatic grant of mandatory spending. During the Bush administration, community health centers received significant increases in funding to expand their services—without any of that funding coming in the form of mandatory (i.e., entitlement) spending.
While many conservatives may support funding for community health centers, they may also support funding them through the discretionary appropriations process, rather than by replenishing a pot of mandatory spending created by Obamacare to subvert the normal spending cycle. The normal appropriations process consists of setting priorities among various programs; this special carve-out for community health centers subverts that process.
Mandatory Opioid Funding: The bill also provides $6 billion in mandatory spending over the next two years to address the opioid crisis. As with the community health center funding, some conservatives may support increasing grants related to the opioid crisis—through the normal spending process.
The Schumer-McConnell “deal” would bust through the Budget Control Act spending caps, increasing the amount of funds available for the normal appropriations bills. (Most of this spending increase would not be paid for.) Additional mandatory health care spending on top of the increase in discretionary funding represents a spendthrift Congress attempting to have its cake and eat it too, while sticking future generations with the bill in the form of more debt and deficits.
But Wait—There’s More!
Surprisingly, the bill does not include an Obamacare “stabilization” (i.e., bailout) package. But other reports on Wednesday suggest that will arrive in short order too. One report noted that Democrats want to increase Obamacare premium subsidies. They not only want to restore unconstitutional payments that President Trump cancelled last fall, “but to expand it—and to bolster the separate subsidy that helps people pay their premiums.”
Republican leaders want to pass a massive Obamacare bailout in the next appropriations measure, an omnibus spending bill likely to come to the House and Senate floors before the Easter break. In a sign of Republicans’ desperation to pass a bailout, Wednesday’s report quoted a Democratic aide as saying that corporate welfare to insurers in the form of a reinsurance package “has become so popular among Republicans that Democrats don’t feel like they have to push very hard.”
There are two ways to solve the problem of rising premiums in Obamacare. One way would fix the underlying problems, by repealing regulations that have led to skyrocketing premiums. The other would merely throw money at the problem by giving more corporate welfare to insurers, providing a short-term “fix” at taxpayers’ ultimate cost. Naturally, most Republicans wish to choose the latter course.
Moreover, in bailing out Obamacare, Republicans will be forced to provide additional taxpayer funding of abortion coverage. There is no way—zero—that Democrats will provide any votes for a bill that provides meaningful pro-life protections for the Obamacare exchanges. Republicans’ desperation to bail out Obamacare will compel them to abandon any pretense of pro-life funding as well.
Most Expensive Parade Ever?
Press reports this week highlighted Pentagon plans to, at President Trump’s request, put on a military spectacle in the form of a massive parade. Trump tweeted his support for the Schumer-McConnell deal on Wednesday, calling it “so important for our great Military.”
It’s an ironic statement, on several levels. First, the hundreds of billions in new deficit spending coming from the military buildup included in the agreement would make the parade the most expensive ever, by far. Second, Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called our rising debt levels our biggest national security threat, because it makes us dependent on other countries to buy our bonds. Given that statement, one can credibly argue that this deficit-driven spending binge will harm our national security much more than the defense funds will help it.
Time will tell whether or not the legislation passes. But if it does, at some point future generations will look back and wonder why the self-proclaimed “king of debt” imposed a financial burden on them that they will not be able to bear easily—if at all.
Mr. Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, a policy consulting firm. He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.