ACA credits people are accusing Chuck Schumer of abandoning would not even exist without his leadership [View all]

Temporary subsidies were originally passed as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021, which included two years of enhanced subsidies (2021 and 2022). The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which passed in 2022, extended these enhanced subsidies for an additional three years, ending after 2025.

These tax credits were set to expire at the end of 2022. Chuck Schumer negotiated hard with fox-in-the-henhouse, Joe Manchin in a 50/50 senate majority w/VP Harris' as a tiebreaker to allow the three-year extension in exchange for jettisoning things like social spending and climate change initiatives from a reconciliation bill Dems were able to pass and have Pres. Biden sign into law on their own in a simple-majority vote.

Manchin was playing god with his vote (along with Sinema)...

NPR:

Here's the fucking thing with people thowing shit at Chuck Schumer, like the nobodies reaching back to claw at Joe Biden, they have nothing, zero to show what they did to advance anything that these very same Democrats are fighting for this very hour; the very things that THEY, themselves fought to provide and protect before voters decided they didn't need a Democratic majority any more; before some people decided that throwing shit at Democrats was more important than preserving what they'd fought and achieved with the slimmest majority that exists.

Get that, the very ACA credits that people are accusing Chuck Schumer of abandoning would not exist, would not have been put into effect and law without the leadership and ability of then-majority leader Schumer to make it happen on 2021 and again in 2022.

And fuck him for still defending those today? That's what he's fighting against, in addition to the actual republican opposition; a load of concern from people who must believe those benefits dropped out of the sky and landed in the federal register.

And, what has he done in this period of optimum public exposure? His critics are talking about the benefits as the most important thing in the nation, as opposed to a month or so ago when you couldn't distinguish them from anything else the republicans are taking away from Americans.

You have to be a political novice to imagine either Democratic leader actually believed republicans from the Senate, to the House, to the WH were just going to faint away and allow the expiring tax credits to continue because the people they deliberately hurt were hurting in the shutdown.

There should be an understanding that this was always a political gambit to first, get the benefits approved, and then dare republicans to end vital medical benefits for millions of their constituents.

That's still the political play, albeit without the political advantage our leaders exercised during the shutdown to heighten the expectations and elevate the potential harm in undoing in the eyes for what looks like a majority of republican constituents vs. Democrats who use the subsidies.

A handful of senators negotiated a pause in the fight until January when a vote on the ACA tax credits will take place shortly after the premiums increase.

That's the political flash point now, and you can count on one thing: Chuck Schumer will still have been fighting outside of our view, negotiating among the Democratic legislators who elected him to represent them, and organizing their votes for unified opposition to republicans and advocacy for Democratic initiatives like the tax credit he's been defending since 2021.

As Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out last night,



I've already read several derisive responses to these facts about the Senate Democratic leader in other posts about 'cheerleading' or 'apologizing' or positivity' which are of course efforts to divert from realities that, likely, they, themselves haven't come anywhere close to the measure of effort and accomplishment of out Democratic leaders; so many believing judging it with a thumbs up or down is some kind of political action.

It's not, of course. It's protest, not governing, and too many who deign their opinion important enough to demand our Democrats stand aside when they face an obstacle aren't on the same level as the people who have already fought and won against republicans (and their own party members), and already achieved the things so many are now purporting to want to preserve and protect.

What a curious tactic that's emerged and become normalized among some Democratic supporters of attacking the people actually doing the fighting when the battle is well underway; willing to cast aside the very people that brought us to where we have those things fought for to defend.