The Senate voted overwhelmingly today 65-33 in favor a $1.8 trillion package of spending bills and tax breaks, sending the legislation to President Obama’s desk for his signature. Included in the two bills are provisions trimming some of the levies that help finance ObamaCare. A tax on medical devices would be suspended for two years, a levy on health insurers would stop for a year and a tax on higher-cost insurance policies would be postponed two years until 2020.
It has been called into question whether it’s true that Sen. Marco Rubio is responsible for the provision (inserted into last year’s annual spending bill and now again into this year’s) that requires the risk-corridor program in ObamaCare to be budget neutral. Like this year’s giant spending law, last year’s omnibus bill was the result of a leadership-driven process that drew on substantive expertise from the relevant committee staffs but did not much involve most members of either house. But Rubio was without question the first and most significant congressional voice on this subject, and if he hadn’t done the work he did, the risk-corridor neutralization provision would not have been in last year’s (or this year’s) budget bill.
The House voted 318-109 to send a $680 billion tax-extenders bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve the legislation alongside the omnibus spending measure. The tax legislation, which would make permanent some tax credits and extend several others, is the product of a deal reached by Democratic and Republican leaders earlier this week.
“With this tax bill, families and businesses are going to have the long-term certainty that they need, instead of scrambling year after year to find out what’s next,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters on Thursday before the vote.