"We'd like to offer a simple proposal that would reopen the government and extend the ACA premium tax credits simultaneously, and then have the opportunity to start negotiating longer term solutions to health care costs. Let's do all three," Schumer said.
Republicans decided the answer was none of the above.
GOP leaders have said throughout the shutdown they would only negotiate on health care after the government reopened. Democrats, meanwhile, had made extending the ACA subsidies their central ask.
"It's terrible," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of Schumer's new proposal.
"The five largest health care companies in America have had a 1,000 percent increase in their stock prices since 2010. We're flooding these people with money that's creating inflation," Graham continued. "The program is broken, and I'm not going to keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies."
"Everybody who follows this knows that's a nonstarter," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said. "There is no way. The ObamaCare extension is the negotiation. That's what we're going to negotiate once the government opens up."
Republicans also want guarantees on Hyde amendment language to ensure the tax credits don't fund abortion services, and anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America sent senators a letter Friday telling them not to back any "clean" extension of the enhanced subsidies.
Democrats and health care advocacy groups say the push for Hyde language isn't being made in good faith and is a way for anti-abortion groups to push for even further restrictions.
The ACA explicitly applies Hyde amendment restrictions to the use of premium tax credits. They can't pay for abortion coverage. Plans must charge each enrollee a $1 per month to pay for the costs of covered abortions and segregate these funds from other premium funds.
The law also allows states to bar all plans participating in the state marketplace from covering abortions.
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