As the government shutdown stretches on without an end in sight, “Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner warned Republicans that it’s their constituents who are set to suffer the most from the standoff.
On Thursday’s show, the former Treasury Department official broke out a new set of charts showing the impact the government shutdown is having on red states versus blue states.
Democrats have refused to fund the government unless Republicans agree to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Rattner explained that after the passage of those Biden-era subsidies, Americans living in Republican-run states, where Medicaid had not been expanded, took advantage of those cheaper rates by a wider margin than their counterparts living in Democratic-run states.
Rattner, citing data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, noted that in red states there was a “157% increase in the number of people in the marketplaces, versus 36% in blue states.” Rattner said that kind of data is likely a motivating factor for some Republicans, who are starting to break with their party over the shutdown.
“That’s why Marjorie Taylor Greene is so exercised about this … because it is heavily a red state phenomenon,” he said.
Rattner then moved on to a separate chart, which showed that red states used the enhanced ACA subsidies at a rate of “almost twice as frequently as the blue states. … The average benefit in the red states is $580 a month.” If those subsidies were to expire at the end of the year, he said, “seven out of 10 of the most affected states will be red states.”
The “Morning Joe” analyst explained that “part of the pressure on these Republican congressmen is that rural hospitals are under enormous pressure.”
He also fact-checked Republicans’ claim that Democrats are shutting down the government over demands to expand health care coverage for undocumented immigrants. “That is simply not true,” he said. ‘They cannot get health care through Medicaid. They can’t take advantage of these tax credits. None of that is true.”
You can watch Rattner’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.