Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill need to find their way to common ground in the shutdown fight that’s paralyzed the federal government.
But there’s one place the GOP shouldn’t compromise, former Vice President Mike Pence said during a stop in Boston on Wednesday.
“I hope Republicans will stand firm on issues like the Obamacare subsidy that was added during the pandemic, [and] set to lapse later this year,“ the Indiana Republican said after a panel discussion on civility in politics at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Dorchester.
“I think Republicans should protect taxpayers on that issue,” Pence, who was President Donald Trump’s second-in-command during his first term, continued.
Congressional Democrats have made continuing and expanding tax credits for people who buy their health insurance through Affordable Care Act exchanges one of their chief conditions for ending the shutdown that began just after midnight on Tuesday.
The Democratic plan would make permanent the enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at year’s end, and make them available to more middle-income households, according to Reuters.
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If lawmakers fail to act, health insurance costs are set to increase for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the exchanges, Reuters reported, citing data by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
The impact would be the most profound in Red states that did not expand their Medicaid rolls.
The panel discussion Pence attended on Wednesday also focused on the rise of the populist wings of the Republican and Democratic parties, and the increasing influence they’re exerting on the national dialogue.
The discussion was moderated by conservative influencer and podcast host, Meghan McCain, the daughter of U.S. Sen. John McCain, a war hero and GOP presidential candidate, who died in 2018.
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Pence, who presided over the nation’s longest government shutdown during Trump’s first term in 2019, told McCain that the current standoff differed from the previous fight in one big way.
“The argument is not over one party wanting to spend more and another party wanting to cut spending, which are always the debates that I welcome,” Pence told McCain. “But, rather, it’s now the difference between the Republican Party that wants to add $2 trillion to the national debt and the Democratic Party that wants to add $3 trillion to the national debt.”
Pence said he was “disappointed” that congressional leaders, who huddled with Trump earlier this week without resolution, “couldn’t find a way to move forward, [to] continue to fund vital programs that millions of Americans depended upon.”
“But it’s also frustrating that the consensus in Washington, D.C. seems to be that we’re going to do nothing about the national debt.”
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While he railed against deficit spending, Pence did not note that the first Trump White House approved $8.4 trillion of new 10-year borrowing, or $4.8 trillion excluding the CARES Act and other COVID-19 relief, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The domestic policy mega-bill that Congress narrowly passed, and Trump signed into law in July, is expected to add a further $3.4 trillion to the national debt, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Speaking to reporters after the event, Pence expanded on his remarks to McCain, saying he hoped that the current standoff would “produce leadership in both parties, at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, that will level with the American people about a nearly $40 trillion national debt.”
And “however the shutdown shakes out, my hope is that Washington, D.C., will start to come to terms with our national debt and bring forward solutions,” he added.