At the risk of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) throwing a comb at another staffer, I must point out that she may have accidentally given the shutdown game away for congressional Democrats. They have held the federal government hostage for nearly a month now over Republicans’ refusal to extend former President Joe Biden‘s enhanced, COVID-19-era subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
In an Oct. 20 X post, Klobuchar lamented that without taxpayers shelling out another $350 billion to $450 billion on extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, “early retirees like Bill & Shelly will see their health insurance premiums increase nearly 300% — from $42 to $1,700 per month.”
Who are Bill and Shelly? According to a CNBC puff piece on the “early retirees,” Shelly said she has not worked full-time since 2015, when she was about 50 years old. And before that, she was only intermittently employed in “various roles at banks and then in state employment.”
Bill said he retired as a civil engineer in 2022, at the age of about 58. He worked in the local and state government for 31 years, and according to pubic records, was earning at least $181,000 by 2016. Despite bringing in a modified gross adjusted income of $136,000 last year, Bill and Shelly received some $15,000 in enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies each year.
If Democrats do not succeed in increasing the trillion-dollar cost of the Affordable Care Act’s baseline subsidies by another 40% in extending the subsidy enhancements, CNBC lamented that Bill and Shelly would “have to make tough financial and lifestyle decisions: pulling more money from retirement savings; claiming Social Security earlier than planned, which would lock in a lower lifetime benefit; putting off non-mandatory medical care; and traveling less.”
If Bill and Shelly serve as any warning to congressional Republicans, let it be that they cannot budge a single inch on extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Biden originally intended to expire by the end of 2022. Extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies would correctly be interpreted as the categorical betrayal of a GOP that has promised to overturn, not just lightly defund, Obamacare. It would also be a financial crime of generational warfare against the young workers already bled dry by the entitlement state that will never repay them.
Recall that Biden’s enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expanded eligibility to include illegal immigrants and American households earning between 400% of the federal poverty level — that’s almost $129,000 each year — to more than half a million dollars. Only 7% of the public receives Affordable Care Act subsidies at all, and the overwhelming majority of the benefit of the enhanced subsidies goes to these middle-class and wealthy earners.
Should the enhanced subsidies expire, the premiums paid by households at the federal poverty line — $32,150 annually for a family of four — will rise from zero to about 2% of their monthly income, about $55 per month. For a family of four earning more than four times the FPL, or at least $160,000 each year, losing the enhanced subsidy would increase payments by nearly $3,000 per year, or five times as much as for the family living at the poverty line.
TRUMP PUSHES BACK DECISION ON FEDERAL EMPLOYEE MASS FIRINGS BY ‘FOUR OR FIVE DAYS’
Klobuchar and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the rest of the Resistance cannot trot out the parents working overtime who will face thousands of dollars of increased costs over the expiration of the enhanced subsidies because they do not exist. When they actually do identify the individual beneficiaries of the emergency enhancements, Democrats are shocked to realize that the rest of the country is not quite as sympathetic that a microscopic dose of fiscal responsibility may force Bill and Shelly to truncate their 30-year vacation.
As we have discussed ad nauseam here, ballooning deficits directly translate to higher interest rates and more expensive mortgages. Continuing to bankroll Bill and Shelly’s 30-year retirement doesn’t just drive young Americans further into debt — it makes the American dream for their children and grandchildren even more impossible. Democrats may pity Bill and Shelly, but Republicans ought not allocate one more dime to well-off boomers so long as they want to be the party of family formation.
