Senator Amy Klobuchar speaking with supporters at a meet and greet at the Northside Cafe in Winterset, Iowa by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0) (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/48208414647/in/photostream/)
In her gubernatorial campaign, Senator Amy Klobuchar has made much of the hit Minnesotans have suffered from the expiration of federal health care tax credits:
This is curious, since these health care tax credits expired precisely because Senator Klobuchar and her Democratic colleagues voted for them to expire.
As I wrote last October:
When it became apparent that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 had completely failed to provide affordable care, the premium tax credit was created in 2014. It provided financial assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans purchasing health insurance through the ACA marketplace. In 2021, the American Rescue Plan temporarily expanded the tax credits for two years, increased the amount of assistance, and eliminated the rule that prevented households with incomes over 400% of the federal poverty line from qualifying.
In 2022 Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (H.R.5376). As I noted in November, it is a hefty bit of legislation, but Subtitle C reads:
You will note the part reading “2021 THROUGH 2025.” The bill legislated for these “temporary” subsidies, enacted in 2021, to be extended, but only until 2025.
This was not some secret. KFF (formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation) reported at the time:
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Senate recently passed a three-year extension (through 2025) of enhanced subsidies for people buying their own health coverage on the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces. These temporary subsidies were originally slated to last two years (2021 and 2022) and were passed as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The enhanced subsidies increase the amount of financial help available to those already eligible and also newly expand subsidies to middle-income people, many of whom were previously priced out of coverage.
This bill passed the Senate on August 7, 2022. Every single Republican voted against it. Every single Democrat voted for it. And that, of course, includes Senator Klobuchar.
“Extending the enhanced subsidies would cost $350 billion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office,” CNBC reported last October, adding, helpfully, “That’s an average of about $35 billion a year.”
