The White House and congressional Republicans say that Democratic lawmakers caused the federal government shutdown as part of an effort to extend health care benefits to undocumented immigrants. However, as several independent experts interviewed by NPR note, that claim is false.
At the center of the standoff is the Trump administration’s Working Families Tax Cut Act, also known as President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law in July.
Democrats say it amounts to tax breaks for billionaires and pays for them with deep Medicaid cuts. The White House insists the law protects taxpayers by preventing undocumented immigrants from getting government health benefits — but such individuals were already barred from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, exchanges.
“It’s a complete distortion,” says Leighton Ku, the director of George Washington University’s Center for Health Policy Research. It is “simply wrong in the details,” he says.
In the weeks ahead of the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, when funding for the federal government was due to expire, GOP lawmakers introduced a continuing resolution to extend the funding until Nov. 21. But Democrats demanded that it also include an extension of ACA subsidies — set to expire at the end of the year — and the reversal of Medicaid cuts.
Republicans have accused the Democrats of holding the government hostage to a “far-left wish list,” including funding the health care of “illegal aliens.” The White House has said the Republicans’ legislation ensures “that taxpayer dollars are focused on American citizens and do not subsidize healthcare for illegal immigrants.”
Jonathan Gruber, the chairman of the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,…
Read the full article here