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In light of popular vote loser Donald Trump's admonishment that the Senate make the Trumpcare bill not as "mean" as the House bill, Republicans are trying to figure out how to do that. They are finding, as lawmakers always will, that making policy not be "mean" means spending some money. So they're now grappling with the taxes in the Affordable Care Act, and how many of them they should keep.
Senators are seriously considering keeping in place some ObamaCare taxes for longer than the House-passed bill would as they seek to draft healthcare legislation that can pass their chamber with a simple majority.
Republicans are looking to slowly phase out extra federal funds for Medicaid expansion, beef up the new tax credits for buying insurance and add money for opioid abuse treatment — but they’ll have to pay for it to ensure the bill passes muster.
That’s because the Senate healthcare bill must save at least as much money as the House’s legislation. Some senators are interested in additions to the healthcare bill that could cost the government, and savings would have to be found elsewhere, perhaps in some of the taxes, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber's No. 3 Republican, said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is heavily involved in the healthcare discussions as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that his preference is to repeal all of the taxes but that senators would "look at everything."
"We're not going to ignore anything," he told reporters Tuesday. "We're going to have to really look very carefully."
Note, though, that Hatch's use of "we" and looking "very carefully" has to be understood to mean not everybody and not carefully, since the majority of senators—including Republicans—don't know what is actually in this bill.