Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus wrote Thursday that it’s unfair to accuse House Republican of attempting to curb the deficit by repealing health care and of being hypocrites on fiscal responsibility by exempting the effects of repeal from their budget rules. Not exactly something you might expect to read from a self-proclaimed critic of the new House budget rules, and GOP attempts to repeal the health care law.
However, Marcus makes one point in this commentary that is surely true.
The argument that repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a "budget buster" definitely is not the best argument against repeal.
The best argument against repeal is that repealing the ACA will make it much more difficult for self-employed individuals and the owners and employees of small businesses - core Republican constituents - to afford decent health insurance.
But it is simply dishonest of the House Republicans to exempt repeal of the entire ACA from budget rules that are supposed to encourage responsible budgeting.
It is easy enough to change the ACA in ways that will save money: repeal the benefits and the individual mandate, and keep the savings!
They could even repeal the benefits and individual mandate, repeal the savings they do not like (such as the phasing out of subsidies to private insurance plans in Medicare) and still claim savings from measures such as the slowdowns in payments for some Medicare services.
Of course Medicare cost estimates are flawed, and of course there might be political pressures against savings in the future. But that is not an argument that should be made by people who want to put multi-year, mindless freezes on discretionary spending, with no attention to policy details. If credit can be claimed for such freezes, they certainly are plausible for entitlement law.
Marcus is trying too hard to give Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., some credit. The provision she defends is simply an effort to rig the rules to fit GOP priorities. It is not responsible budgeting.
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