The White House said Wednesday afternoon that repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate should move ‘separately’ from tax cuts – just hours after President Donald Trump called for harvesting the revenue savings from a repeal.
President Donald Trump touted the idea of ending Obamacare’s individual mandate in a tax cut bill Republican lawmakers are struggling to cobble together in a pair of tweets Wednesday morning. Ending the mandate that individuals buy insurance would strike a blow to Obamacare.
But by the afternoon, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: ‘In terms of the mandate, we’re focused on pushing through tax cuts and tax reforms separately.’
‘Obviously we’ve never made it a secret that we’d like to repeal and replace Obamacare. We’d still like to do that, but we still think it’s probably more likely to do something like that in the spring,’ she said.
Repeal of the mandate is being eyed in part because it would produce billions in additional tax revenue that could be used to pay for the cost of additional tax cuts.
President Donald Trump touted the idea of ending Obamacare’s individual mandate in a tax cut bill, although the head of the House Ways and Means committee has bad-mouthed the idea
‘Wouldn’t it be great to Repeal the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further Tax Cuts … for the Middle Class,’ Trump wrote in a pair of tweets Wednesday morning.
‘The House and Senate should consider ASAP as the process of final approval moves along. Push Biggest Tax Cuts EVER,’ the president wrote.
House Ways and Means Committee members are struggling to finalize tax reform legislation, having twice delayed the release of their plan. The overarching difficulty is finding a way to fit promised tax cuts into a $1.5 trillion ceiling authorized in the Republican budget.
Tax writers have been searching for ways to boost revenue, including a proposal to change contribution limits to 401(k) plans as a way to bring revenue in earlier – an idea the the president has shot down.
Some House leaders are concerned that bringing in provisions dealing with health care would only complicate the task of passing a bill. Ways and Means chairman Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas knocked the idea as hazardous to the bill he is assembling.
‘What I don’t want to do is to add things that could again kill tax reform like healthcare died over there,’ Brady told radio host Hugh Hewitt, the Washington Examiner reported.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah has also said he would prefer to keep healthcare separate.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration is focused on ‘pushing through tax cuts and tax reforms separately’ from repeal of an Obamacare mandate
‘What I don’t want to do is to add things that could again kill tax reform like healthcare died over there,’ warned Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman
But it could provide billions in revenue that would allow Republicans to include other tax cuts, as they seek to lower the corporate tax rate, lower income tax rates, eliminate the estate tax on a permanent basis, and enact other changes while squeezing them into their budget allocation.
A Congressional Budget Office estimate found that repealing the mandate would provide $416 billion over ten years. Without the mandate, the scorekeepers predict, fewer people would get Medicaid coverage, join marketplaces under Obamacare, or get employer-provided care that gets subsidized by tax deductions.
However this would come at a cost: an estimated 15 million Americans would lose their insurance.
‘About 2 million fewer people would have employment-based coverage, about 6 million fewer people would obtain non-group policies (insurance people can purchase directly either in the marketplaces or from insurers outside the marketplaces), and about 7 million fewer people would have coverage under Medicaid,’ according to CBO. Premiums would spike an estimated 20 per cent.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas has promoted the idea of including individual mandate repeal in the tax bill, as has Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who appeared Wednesday on Fox News.