Supreme Court Rejects GOP Effort to Overturn Obamacare

By Yuval Rosenberg

Supreme Court Rejects GOP Effort to Overturn
the Affordable Care Act

The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it has rejected a
lawsuit filed by a group of Republican-led states and the former
Trump administration that sought to overturn the Affordable Care
Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

In a 7-2 vote, the court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked the
legal standing to bring the suit because they had not been harmed
by the law. Accordingly, the ruling does not address the merits of
the case.

In their dissent, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch argued
that the plaintiffs had in fact been harmed financially and
administratively. “The States have clearly shown that they suffer
concrete and particularized financial injuries that are traceable
to conduct of the Federal Government,” Alito wrote. “The ACA
saddles them with expensive and burdensome obligations, and those
obligations are enforced by the Federal Government. That is
sufficient to establish standing.”

The ruling in the case, California v. Texas, marks the third
time the court has taken up a case that could overturn the ACA, and
the third time it has declined to do so.

What the case was about: Republican officials in Texas
and 17 other states sued the federal government in 2018 seeking to
overturn the ACA, arguing that the law became invalid in its
entirety when the individual mandate – the penalty for not
purchasing health insurance – was reduced to zero by Congress in
2017 as part of its overhaul of the tax code. The Trump
administration backed the suit and filed a brief in 2020 urging the
Supreme Court to strike down the law.

Supporters are relieved: Democrats cheered the court’s
ruling. President Joe Biden said the “Affordable Care Act remains
the law of the land,” while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of
New York said the decision means that “the ACA is here to stay.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California took aim at the GOP,
saying, “We will never forget how Republican leaders embraced this
monstrous suit to rip away millions of Americans’ health care in
the middle of a deadly pandemic.”

The American Medical Association also expressed support for the
ruling. “With yet another court decision upholding the ACA now
behind us, we remain committed to strengthening the current law and
look forward to policymakers advancing solutions to improve the
ACA,” Gerald Harmon, the organization’s president, said in a
statement.

The roughly 31 million Americans who now have health insurance
as a result of the ACA, as well as millions more who are covered by
its provisions, including rules governing pre-existing conditions,
are probably breathing a little easier, as well. A ruling in favor
of the plaintiffs could have resulted in millions of people losing
their coverage and regulatory chaos throughout the health care
system.

Looking ahead: “With the threat to the ACA's existence
now in the rearview mirror, attention turns to how to fill in its
gaps,” tweeted Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, citing
temporary premium assistance, incomplete Medicaid expansion and
high health care costs as issues that need to be addressed.

“I'd say the decade long debate over whether the Affordable Care
Act should exist is over,” Levitt added. “We can now return to the
longstanding ideological debate over the role of government in
restraining health care costs and providing coverage to
people.”

Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan Gains More Support

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal being hammered
out in the Senate got a boost Wednesday as 21 Democratic and
Republican senators publicly backed the framework.

“We support this bipartisan framework that provides an historic
investment in our nation’s core infrastructure needs without
raising taxes,” the senators said in a
joint statement. “We look forward to working with
our Republican and Democratic colleagues to develop legislation
based on this framework to address America’s critical
infrastructure challenges.”

Within reach of the magic number: The announcement more
than doubles the support base for the emerging deal being crafted
by 10 senators — and because 11 Republicans have signed on, the
compromise could, at least in theory, win the 60 votes needed to
pass in the evenly divided Senate. “Their public support indicates
that Republicans feel the urgency to reach a deal on popular
physical infrastructure measures soon or risk Democrats cutting
them out of the process,” NBC News’s Sahil Kapur, Dartunorro Clark
and Frank Thorp V
wrote.

Yet even as the bipartisan proposal gathers momentum, it still
faces challenges in reaching the 60-vote threshold given that
progressives including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ed Markey
(D-MA) announced this week that they won’t back a bill that doesn’t
address Democratic priorities like climate change. And key details
of the bipartisan framework, including the potentially divisive
specifics about financing the new spending, are reportedly still in
flux.

Biden and congressional Democrats continue to work along two
tracks, pursuing a bipartisan deal while also preparing to go it
alone on a broader or separate package of investments for
Democratic priorities such as child care, elder care and
education.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) met Wednesday with
Democratic senators on the Budget Committee to advance that
process, with the aim of having votes in July. Sen. Tim Kaine
(D-VA)
said the Budget Committee was crafting a package
that “gives us a latitude to do what we need to do — we can shrink
it if there’s a bipartisan deal, we could do the broader deal if
there isn’t.”

Democrats still face obstacles in trying to bypass the GOP and
passing a package via budget reconciliation, as Sen. Joe Manchin
(D-WV) said Wednesday he won’t commit to backing a reconciliation
bill later in exchange for securing other Democratic votes on a
smaller, bipartisan bill now. Some Democrats had sought assurances
that Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) would support a second
infrastructure package if lawmakers agreed to a smaller bipartisan
deal.

Sanders seeking a $6 trillion package: Sanders, the chair
of the Senate Budget Committee,
told reporters that he’s working on a $6 trillion
budget reconciliation package that would include lowering the
eligibility age and expanding benefits coverage for Medicare and a
plan to lower prescription drug costs. That plan faces resistance
from centrist Democrats.

Who’s on board: The Republicans who endorsed the
bipartisan plan on Wednesday are Sens. Richard Burr of North
Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine,
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob
Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Mike Rounds of South Dakota,
Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana and Jerry
Moran of Kansas.

The Democrats backing the plan are Sens. Chris Coons of
Delaware, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, John Hickenlooper of
Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen of New
Hampshire, Sinema and Mark Warner of Virginia. Sen. Angus King of
Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also signed the
statement.

Number of the Day: 412,000

The number of initial filings for unemployment benefits at the
state level rose to 412,000 last week, an increase of 37,000 from
the week before and the highest total since April. The
disappointing results were above estimates, but most analysts said
they expect the increase to be a temporary blip.

“The big picture is that while we are not back to a ‘normal’
level yet of initial claims, they are no longer astronomically
high,” economist AnnElizabeth Konkel of the Indeed Hiring Lab said,
according to the
Associated Press. Most experts peg the normal
weekly claims number in a range between 200,000 and 250,000.

Fed Chair Jay Powell told reporters Wednesday that the pandemic
is still having a pronounced affect the labor market. “Factors
related to the pandemic, such as care-giving needs, ongoing fears
of the virus, and unemployment insurance payments appear to be
weighing on employment growth,” he said. “These factors should wane
in coming months, against a backdrop of rising vaccinations,
leading to more rapid gains in employment.”

Quote of the Day

“If the I.R.S. started staffing up now, it would take them at
least a decade to catch up. They don’t have enough I.R.S. agents
with enough knowledge to know what they are looking at. They are so
grossly overmatched it’s not funny.”

— Former I.R.S. attorney Monte Jackel, quoted in a
New York Times analysis of how the $4.5 trillion
private equity industry reduces its tax burden. “The industry has
perfected sleight-of-hand tax-avoidance strategies so aggressive
that at least three private equity officials have alerted the
Internal Revenue Service to potentially illegal tactics,” the
Times’ Jesse Drucker and Danny Hakim say. “But the I.R.S., its
staff hollowed out after years of budget cuts, has thrown up its
hands when it comes to policing the politically powerful
industry.”

Programming note: In honor of the new Juneteenth
federal holiday, TFT will not publish on Friday, June 18. Our next
newsletter will hit your inbox on Monday, June 21. Send your
feedback to yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com.
And please tell your friends they can
sign up here for their own copy of this
newsletter.

News

Views and Analysis