Democrats’ risky strategies show they never learned their lessons from Obamacare

Democrats’ risky strategies show they never learned their lessons from Obamacare

By Catherine Rampell

Columnist|

Yesterday at 5:59 p.m. EDT

After more than a decade of defending Obamacare, Democrats should have learned that Republicans will use every tool available to sabotage a Democratic president’s signature achievement.

So why are Democrats making it easier for that to happen to President Biden’s agenda?

As Democrats decide how to trim their safety-net-and-climate bill, progressives argue for keeping every item on their wish list, funding each for only a few years rather than prioritizing fewer, permanent measures. They assume every program will prove so popular that future Congresses, even Republican-controlled ones, will have no choice but to renew them.

After all, look how difficult it was for Republicans to dislodge the Affordable Care Act!

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But that is precisely the wrong takeaway from the Obamacare fight.

It’s true that killing a benefit already in place is politically perilous. But Obamacare came extremely close to being repealed in 2017 all the same. And critically, the default for that law was to continue. The programs Democrats are considering now would expire on their own. It’s much easier for Congress to kill a program through inaction than action.

Additionally, the ACA experience shows why Biden’s slate of programs might be especially vulnerable to either lapsing — or collapsing.

Any major government initiative that passes along partisan lines is inherently less resilient because the other party isn’t invested in its success. In fact, in the current political climate, the other party is likely to be actively rooting for (or accelerating) its failure.

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That doesn’t mean Democrats should waste time chasing un-gettable Republican votes for Biden’s package, as they did during the 2010 Obamacare negotiations. This time around, Republican leadership made abundantly clear that they planned to block Biden’s agenda at all costs. And in any case, any Democratic priorities Republicans were willing to support have already been peeled off in the separate bipartisan infrastructure package.

It does mean, though, that Democrats should anticipate, and account for, efforts to undermine their agenda.

For example: Sprawling pieces of legislation such as this often have drafting errors or structural flaws that are noticed only after the bill passes. Historically, Congress had been willing to quietly pass routine “technical corrections” bills to fix these errors. The ACA changed things, though. Passing legislation to fix even minor glitches in Obamacare (among other laws passed with party-line votes) has since proved exceedingly difficult. Ambiguities in the law can also make it easier for future administrations to undermine its implementation.

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That’s why it’s critical for Democrats to get the nitty-gritty design details right upfront. This is their one shot to ensure programs are bulletproof. They mustn’t jam through a bunch of half-baked proposals (as they are reportedly now considering, including with a not-yet-stress-tested “billionaire tax”) and cross their fingers that defects will be fixed later.

A structurally unsound program will risk not only expiring, but also never getting off the ground in the first place. Or it may backfire, if there are unanticipated and uncompensated losers from the plan. (There were some in the ACA, despite pledges to the contrary.)

Additionally, some of Democrats’ programs, such as a child-care expansion, are expected to require partnerships with states. States could choose to opt out of these programs, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision on Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

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A dozen states have still not adopted the Medicaid expansion, even though the feds offer generous financial incentives to participate. We should expect the same with Biden-era programs.

How can Democrats minimize this risk? One option is building in backup plans, such as allowing a county to apply for child-care funds even if the state’s governor opts out.

Another is — and I realize I sound like a broken record — narrowing their priorities and funding them permanently, instead of financing everything for just a few years.

One of the key talking points that Republican governors, state lawmakers and lobbyists have used to justify opting out of the Medicaid expansion is that Congress might someday renege on its high federal funding match and leave states holding the bag. This concern is arguably disingenuous; if anyone would slash federal Medicaid expansion funding, it would be members of their own party.

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But this is a much more realistic worry for Biden’s agenda. The risk of a future funding lapse is not merely hypothetical; it’s what progressives would write the law to actually do. If funding for a complex new initiative such as child care isn’t guaranteed for at least 10 years, more states might balk at making substantial investments upfront.

If Democrats want their “transformative” agenda to not only pass but endure, they will need to evangelize it aggressively — something they learned a little too late with the Obamacare rollout. The GOP’s onslaught of anti-Build Back Better propaganda is inevitable.

But Democrats also need to give Republicans less material to work with.