WASHINGTON — President Obama will have to give to get.
Opponents of Obama’s signature health-care law are pushing for costs of the plan to be part of the negotiations over preventing the so-called fiscal cliff, while supporters are trying to keep cuts off the table.
Obama will begin a series of meetings this week on how to stave off $700 billion in scheduled tax hikes and across-the-board cuts in spending, a combination that economic analysts contend will wreck the economy and cause a recession.
In light of his re-election, Obama said, Republicans must by backing his plan to hike taxes on the wealthy as part of any alternative to going over the fiscal cliff.
But conservatives are eyeing cuts in the insurance subsidies in the health-care law as part of any budget compromise.
“The president said everything should be on the table, so it should be on the table,” said Michael Cannon, director of health-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.
The subsidies help those making up to four times the poverty rate obtain insurance, a figure opponents have said is too generous. The premium help isn’t slated to go into effect until 2014. Delaying it one year would bring in $50 billion, Cannon said.
“That’s not going to solve the deficit problem, but it will certainly help,” he said.
“The easiest spending to cut is unpopular spending that hasn’t happened yet, and that’s ObamaCare.”
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act, however, say the law, on the whole, results in a savings to the government and should not be touched.
“It’s very tempting to see a big pot of money and start eating away at it,” said Sarah Dash of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. “But it’s like eating out of the cookie jar; you can’t eat just one. This is an essential part of making sure people can afford health insurance.”
Obama will dive into fiscal- cliff talks, beginning today, with a series of meetings. The president will sit down with labor leaders today, business leaders tomorrow and the four top members of Congress on Friday.
He will be mostly preaching to the choir as he meets with union honchos, who widely backed him during the campaign. The AFL-CIO recently took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post supporting Obama’s campaign call to allow the expiration of tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000.
“With working- class families across the country still struggling, we can’t afford to pay for any more tax breaks for those who need them the least,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.
The four congressional leaders Obama will meet with Friday are House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Obama has remained steadfast on his position that tax cuts for the wealthy expire, while Boehner has called that a deal breaker.
Boehner last week said that Republicans could support some kind of increased revenues but that it would have to be part of tax reform that eliminates deductions and loopholes.