WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday
voted to move forward with a long-stalled proposal to extend aid to more than
two million people whose unemployment assistance ran out late last year.
Despite a bipartisan compromise
that paved the way for a final vote and almost certain passage in the Senate
next week, the measure appeared likely to falter in the House, where Speaker
John A. Boehner this week again called
the Senate plan unworkable.
The unemployment bill, however, was
one among many of Mr. Boehner’s concerns as he and Republican leaders found
themselves backed into a corner after it appeared that legislation they favored
that would prevent a 24 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors almost
failed with an April 1 deadline looming.
The bill, known as the “doc fix,”
ran into trouble after members of both parties objected to its temporary nature,
as many prefer a permanent fix. Some Republicans objected more broadly to the
overall cost, saying it was paid for with an accounting gimmick.
To avoid major disruption in
hospitals and doctors’ offices next week, Mr. Boehner and leaders from both
parties agreed to muscle the measure through by using a procedural trick that
allowed them to call a vote without actually taking the roll.
The drama in the House was just
one episode in an unusually eventful day on Capitol Hill, where actual lawmaking
has already given way to the partisan grandstanding typical of an election
year.
The day began with a coalition of
Democratic senators announcing their call for significant changes to President
Obama’s health care law, an issue that is weighing on almost every Democrat up
for re-election this year.
The six senators, including three
who are up for re-election, wrote in an op-ed
for Politico Magazine that the law is worth saving despite its many
imperfections, a position that polls have shown is more popular than a wholesale
repeal.
Some of their proposals include
adding a less costly, high-deductible “Copper Plan” to the existing marketplace
options of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze; making small-business health care
tax credits available longer and making them accessible to more employers; and
offering an additional, permanent way to enroll in the health care marketplace
other than HealthCare.gov, the website whose rollout has been plagued by
problems.
Democrats in conservative states
like Alaska, Arkansas and North Carolina have been hit with a barrage of ads
attacking them for standing by the Affordable Care Act. They have struggled with
how to best respond.
“My opponents would love to use
health care to beat me up,” said Senator Mark Begich of Alaska and one of the
Democrats who signed onto the overhaul plan. “But Alaskans vote on a broader
range of issues like, ‘Am I doing the work? Am I getting the job done?’ and
‘What am I doing to make the law better?’ ”
Phil
Schiliro, a White House health care adviser, said, “We welcome the senators’
involvement and look forward to reviewing these ideas.”
Democrats will try to make
inequality and pocketbook issues the staples of their 2014 election strategy.
And the unemployment extension vote was just the beginning of a longer push on
issues including raising the minimum wage, college affordability and
strengthening Medicare.
Ten Republicans joined 53
Democrats and the two independents to break a Republican filibuster of the
unemployment bill on Thursday. It calls for a five-month extension of the
benefits that expired on Dec. 28, and it would be retroactive.
Though a handful of members of Mr.
Boehner’s own conference have called for a renewal of the expired unemployment
assistance, which is meant to help people who have been out of work for more
than six months, the bill has run into resistance among more conservative
members. They have balked at the $10 billion cost and object to the government’s
paying for anything but short-term benefits.
Mr. Boehner this week dashed any
hopes that House leaders would seek the kind of bipartisan compromise struck in
the Senate to offset the roughly $10 billion cost. It would extend certain
United States Customs fees, put in place an accounting maneuver that allows
corporations to postpone contributions to employee plans, and deny benefits to
people whose gross income exceeded $1 million last year.
Mr. Boehner also introduced a new
wrinkle: how to account for people who have found jobs between Dec. 28 and now.
He said everyone whose benefits have expired would have to be paid out, even
those who are now working.