Proposal creates budget problems for Republicans

By Andrew Taylor

WASHINGTON — Republicans intent on scrapping Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act have a budget problem.

As it turns out, repealing and replacing the law they hate so much won’t save nearly as much money as getting rid of it entirely, the goal they’ve been campaigning on for seven years. That means trouble for the federal deficit and for Congress’ fiscal conservatives who repeatedly warn about leaving their children and grandchildren worse off financially.

President Trump and other GOP leaders know they can’t just get rid of the law; instead they’ve pledged to “repeal and replace” it. So they’ve come up with a bill that would fix Obama’s “disaster” and insist it would give Americans more choices on health coverage.

But it only reduces the deficit by $337 billion over a decade and doesn’t move the federal budget much closer to being balanced, if at all. That’s one big reason many budget-conscious Republicans have joined Democrats in opposing the repeal-and-replace version pushed by the White House and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

In proposing his 2018 budget Thursday, Trump called for spending billions more on defense while slashing domestic programs. He pledged during the campaign to leave the costly mandatory programs such as Medicare and Social Security untouched, and he won’t raise taxes. That budget plan guarantees large deficits.

“Our military is more important to me than a balanced budget,” Trump said in January.

The initial Republican plan to completely scuttle the 2010 health care law promised a cut of more than $2 trillion from the deficit over 10 years.

The GOP health care bill cuts the deficit by much less.

“Now that (health care repeal) is actually going to happen, they’ve changed their priorities greatly so that they’re not actually trying to generate any significant savings,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington advocacy group for budget discipline.