Hard to feel sorry for this congressional time crunch
It’s been pretty quiet in and around Washington, D.C. with Congress adjourned for the last two weeks. We should all be so lucky. But that peace is about to end when lawmakers once again fill the halls of Congress when they return Monday, and waiting for them is a full slate of issues all needing immediate attention. Health care is still on the plate simply because nothing can be done about tax reform until the health care conundrum is settled. But there is another more pressing issue that could turn ugly and put health care on the back burner along with several other congressional initiatives.
Lawmakers have to keep the government running. That means they have to pass something, probably a continuing resolution, by the April 28 deadline and there are several lines of conflict to cross before any agreement can be reached. Though nobody should want the government to turn out the lights, it has happened, and could again. The last time the government shut down was in October 2013. Nobody thought that game of chicken was worth it then, either, yet, they did it anyway. All they accomplished was to make everyone look bad.
President Trump is demanding funds to build a border wall and money for more border agents and other immigration officers. There is not unity of agreement among Republicans or Democrats for any of that. And the clock is ticking which can give those opposed to any of the above a huge negotiating advantage. While it’s pretty standard procedure, on Friday, the White House ordered government agencies to prepare for a shutdown.
Continuing resolutions are not the way to run a railroad, much less a government. It stresses the entire system, particularly the military, that is already stressed. On top of that the resurrected health care talks face another deadline of sorts. Insurance companies are reaching the point where they have to decided to fish or cut bait. Will the government continue to provide subsidies that account for around $100 billion? President Trump has threatened to withhold those subsidies to get Democrats to the table, but that course of action is fraught with land mines that could easily blow up on his party and so far, Democrats haven’t taken the bait.
Insurance companies are also trying to figure out pricing and more to the point, if they want to remain in the marketplace at all. There is some thought that insurance rates could rise as much as 30 percent. No one has figured out yet how to attract younger healthier enrollees to help offset the sickest enrollees. And one idea on the table is to allow states to form high risk pools for those individuals.
It’s hard to feel sorry for members of Congress. They’ve know when the government was set to run out of money — yet — they took two weeks off. They knew that health care had to be addressed before any meaningful tax reform could be discussed. It’s very difficult for the average American to feel any empathy toward an institution that keeps doing the same thing over and over again and tries to convince us, with some success, that they’re not insane.
This story was originally published April 22, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Hard to feel sorry for this congressional time crunch."