House Republicans’ ObamaCare deal talking points

National Review has obtained a copy of the internal talking points House Republican leadership plans to use to sell their version of the Senate’s deal to end the government shutdown.

NR has obtained the leadership’s new internal talking points http://t.co/0mrTSNgtk5

— Robert Costa (@robertcostaNRO) October 15, 2013

The deal, which is already being panned by many conservatives, was outlined by the House leadership team during a meeting of the House Republican Conference this morning.

Republicans will tout that they have convinced the Obama Administration to verify the income levels of ObamaCare subsidy recipients, but it appears that was already in the law. ObamaCare will not be delayed, much less defunded.

One of the main differences between the House and Senate deals is that the House version would delay the so-called Medical Device Tax. The House is also seeking to prohibit special treatment for elected officials under the law, and remove some provisions that gave favorable treatment to unions.

In what has become the usual sequence of events, conservatives aren’t satisfied with what’s being offered, but the Administration is framing it as a “partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans.”

WH calls House plan "partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans who forced the government shutdown in the 1st place"

— Karen Travers (@karentravers) October 15, 2013

A vote on the House plan is tentatively scheduled for tonight, but sources on the Hill tell Yellowhammer that the current plan is a “working document” that will likely see changes prior to it coming to the floor of the House.

The talking points that will be used by the House GOP are as follows:

(Differences between the House and Senate plans are in bold)

• To end the government shutdown and avoid a national default, House Republicans are proposing several common-sense changes to make the emerging bipartisan agreement in the Senate fairer for the American people, who are being forced by Washington Democrats to live under the president’s train wreck of a health care law.
• The House GOP proposal would modify the emerging Senate agreement to prohibit special treatment for House Members, Senators, the president, the Vice President and members of the president’s Cabinet under the president’s health care law, requiring all to be placed in ObamaCare without taxpayer-provided subsidies.  If the president and Senate Democrats are going to force the American people to live under ObamaCare, then they and all Washington leaders should not be shielded from the law.
• The House GOP plan eliminates the special ObamaCare protections for labor unions in the emerging Senate agreement and replaces it with a two-year delay of ObamaCare’s “pacemaker tax” (medical device tax), which places a new tax on essential medical devices such as children’s hearing aids and senior citizens’ pacemakers, and income verification for those receiving taxpayer subsidies through ObamaCare, shutting down the Obama Administration’s plan to invite rampant fraud by relying on the so-called “honor system” for the distribution of such subsidies. In conversations between the White House and House Republicans, the administration indicated the president could accept a delay of the pacemaker tax.
• The House plan would maintain the emerging deal’s date of the continuing resolution (CR) funding government operations to January 15 while immediately reopening the federal government.
• Like the emerging Senate agreement, the House plan would extend the debt ceiling to February 7.  But the House plan would bar the Treasury Department from using accounting gimmicks known as “extraordinary measures,” increasing the transparency of the federal budget process and prohibiting what economist Donald Marron calls the “embarrassingly casual” use today of such measures by the Treasury Secretary.  In the era of President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, short-term debt limit increases with hard dates and no gimmicks were the norm.  The House plan seeks to restore transparency to the process and deny bureaucrats the ability to use budget gimmicks to mislead the public about the financial condition of the United States.
• The House GOP plan will end the government shutdown and prevent a national default while making the emerging Senate agreement fairer for the American people.

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