There’s still no word from CBO, though 7:30 ET is the new target date. But clearly, there are problems with conforming to the long-term deficit reduction needs determined by the reconciliation process.
Kent Conrad, budget scold that he is, kind of alluded to that with another reconciliation problem, that some provisions may not pass the “Byrd rule” of being budget related. Steny Hoyer may want an assurance for his members that the Senate will stick to their agreement, but he should be asking for one from Joe Biden, to waive Byrd rule concerns. Because if some pieces get struck, that would mean changes to the reconciliation fix in the Senate and yet another vote from the House to finish this off.
But the bigger short-term problem is finding a sidecar fix that complies to the deficit reduction requirements within the 10- and 20-year budget windows. Most of the items in the sidecar increase federal spending or decrease revenues. And the offsets for that, like taxes on the wealthy, do not enthuse the remaining conservative Democratic votes necessary to pass the bill in the House. So back goes Rich Trumka to sign off on potentially increasing the excise tax on high-end insurance plans. Since this doesn’t apply until 2018, it wouldn’t much matter to the short-term budget picture, but it would get the number-crunchers over the line in the second ten years.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is headed into a meeting with President Obama this afternoon after the White House and Congressional leaders have begun to discuss a higher-than-expected excise tax on some health care plans, in order to maintain their claim that health care legislation will reduce the deficit, a source involved in health care talks said.
Any unexpected change to the health care plan could endanger support for the bill from labor, which agreed to back it after reductions to the planned excise tax. Proposed new changes, I’m told, concern cuts to the rate at which increases to the tax exemption cap are indexed.
This comes right as labor has dumped $11 million dollars into a last-ditch effort to convince Stupak Democrats to support the bill. Surely the enthusiasm for that will rise upon this news, right?
Once again we see an expectation for liberals who want health care reform to knuckle under, and in this case accept an increase in the excise tax, which they’ve long opposed.
UPDATE: Sam Stein has more, says that the White House wants to lower the indexing to just the CPI instead of the CPI + 1%.
