“Earlier this week, the non-partisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released an analysis that showed 24 million Americans would lose their health coverage if Republicans ever succeeded in their endless quest to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 24 million. Over 80 percent of those losing coverage would be in working families. So much for the Republican sentiments expressed last week about incentivizing work during the roll out of their so-called poverty agenda.
“The Republicans’ acknowledgement of the consequences for Americans’ health care if the ACA is repealed is reflected one of the bills that will come before us today. HR 5447 envisions certain tax-advantaged accounts being used to purchase health insurance in the exchanges established by the ACA. That’s a welcome step. We are glad the Republicans are acknowledging the merit of individuals getting quality, affordable coverage in the exchanges.
“However, other bills coming up today seem designed to shift people from affordable, comprehensive coverage to savings accounts and high-deductible health plans.
“This approach provides unprecedented tax-sheltering opportunities for high-income taxpayers, doubling the maximum annual HSA contribution starting next year. High income people are the most likely to make maximum contributions to these accounts and are thus most likely to benefit from Mr. Paulsen’s bill.
“This is more of the same for the Republican Party - tax breaks for the wealthy, while critical priorities for working class Americans remain unaddressed.
“There is another very troubling aspect to many of these bills - they increase our nation’s deficit. Just two of the bills combined would add over $50 billion to our nation’s debt. These bills include no offsets, nor is there any commitment by the Republicans to provide offsets in the future.
“Mr. Chairman, we struggled mightily to find offsets to cover the cost of protecting at-risk children in the earlier foster care legislation. And truth be told, we could have used even more funding to make the new child abuse prevention funds available sooner. But now we have bills that would cost over 30 times as much with no offsets whatsoever.
“We should not have a harsher budget standard for protecting vulnerable children than we do for providing tax breaks."
