On Nov. 1, the stakes in the federal shutdown escalate to inhumane levels. It’s time for the game of chicken that has gone on for nearly a month in the nation’s capital to end. President Trump and members of Congress need to reach a compromise, which is far from the dirty word it’s made out to be in this polarized era, and is what makes the government work.
The first day of November is when premiums for Obamacare health insurance policies jump and federal funding for food and home heating assistance is set to run out. There is a real threat that millions of children and older Americans will go hungry without meals purchased with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, which used to be called food stamps, or freeze in their homes without subsidies to buy fuel oil or pay their utility bills.
The extension of enhanced tax credits for purchasers of Obamacare policies has been the central demand of Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. This is where a compromise is needed, with both sides giving a little, so a revised bill to continue temporary funding at current levels — including for SNAP and home heating help — can pass through Congress.
Across the country, 42 million people receive SNAP benefits. Many of them work but don’t earn enough to feed their children. In Massachusetts, 1.1 million people receive the benefits, almost a third of them children.
If SNAP funding lapses, many beneficiaries will turn to food banks and pantries, which are already saying they will not be able to meet all the need. On its website, the Greater Boston Food Bank is soliciting donations to try to help SNAP recipients if funding runs out.
Barring a broader compromise, there is another way out of this stalemate on food benefits. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has joined House Democrats in calling on Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to tap contingency reserve funds to cover two-thirds of the month’s benefits and use her authority to transfer funds to make up the rest. The Trump administration has resisted this move, saying it’s not allowed under the rules. This explanation comes from an administration that has made it a practice to ignore and trample on long-standing federal rules and norms.
About 7 million Americans rely on federal assistance to pay their home heating bills. In Massachusetts, 159,000 households do, to the tune of $144 million last year. In the metro area, the aid is distributed by Action for Boston Community Development, the anti-poverty nonprofit. The state government told WBUR it has $7 million available for emergencies, such as an empty fuel oil tank.
Massachusetts recipients who rely on natural gas or electricity for home heating are fortunate to live in a state that prohibits those utilities from being shut off for nonpayment between Nov. 15 and March 15. But a shutoff of Low Income Home Heating Assistance threatens to add to the stresses those struggling households already must endure.
The lynchpin to a broader compromise to reopen the federal government is the extension of tax credits adopted during the pandemic for people with Obamacare policies. Given the Republican-controlled Congress has already extended tax breaks for the wealthy, why not extend tax subsidies for the health insurance of less prosperous people?
Republican leaders have complained of fraud and abuse in who gets the Obamacare tax credits. That may be true, to some minor undetermined degree. But it is not a reason to stop everyone from receiving the credits.
There’s hardly a federal program that doesn’t experience some level of waste, fraud and abuse, the reason each department has an inspector general, who — please note, President Trump — is supposed to be independent.
A reasonable compromise would extend the Obamacare tax credits along with calibrated steps to wring out any fraud and abuse. The key word is “calibrated.” Those rules should be narrowly written and not designed to exclude people who have a legitimate need for a tax credit. After all, health insurance in any market is not cheap.
Political partisans and journalists should not take as a primary point of analysis which party won and which lost in any compromise to reopen the government. The standard should be how much the Americans, the taxpayers, won by restarting services provided by the government “of the people, for the people and by the people.”
Outside the Beltway, the interstate highway that circles Washington, most people don’t care about the point-scoring tallies that government insiders keep with such diligence. People care about the government they pay for doing what it is supposed to do and getting the most and best out of the tax dollars they send to the nation’s capital.
The president ballyhoos himself as such a great dealmaker. He’s supposed to act as the president of the entire country, not just red states. Show the American people you can do it, President Trump, and get this deal done.