Guthrie talks health care legislation with economic development officials

April 20--2nd District U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie told an audience at the Owensboro Convention Center on Wednesday evening that Republican efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act would result in savings for the federal government and states.

He also told the group that the Republican plan, when complete, could return able-bodied people, who are currently receiving health coverage through the ACA's Medicaid expansion, to the work force.

"I've been touring factories today," Guthrie told an audience at the Kentucky Association for Economic Development spring conference. The Medicaid expansion, Guthrie said, is cutting into businesses' efforts to attract workers.

Guthrie said one factory official told him, "'We really stopped seeing people come in" for machine operator jobs once they started receiving health coverage through the Medicaid expansion. "'... Now that people are covered with benefits, people have stopped coming to work.'"

A GOP effort to replace the ACA with what Republicans called the American Health Care Act stalled in March after House leadership pulled the bill rather than let it go to a vote where it was expected to be defeated. Moderate Republicans and the more conservative Freedom Caucus in the House had divergent ideas on the bill.

A revised bill has not been introduced, but efforts to craft a new plan are under way in the House. Guthrie said the House plan, whenever it emerges, will have to be written in a way that it can pass in the Senate using budget reconciliation rules, which only require 51 Senate votes.

Guthrie told the audience there was no reason to assume congressional Senate Democrats would cooperate with undoing the ACA, which was one of the principal achievements of the Obama administration.

"To expect them to come help us is unrealistic," Guthrie said. The Senate can't repeal certain aspects of the ACA, like the penalty that people must pay if they can afford health coverage but choose not to get it, with less than 60 votes. But it would only take 51 votes in the Senate through reconciliation to reduce the penalty to zero, Guthrie said.

Before his public remarks, Guthrie said a proposal for a future bill is to stop enrolling people in the Medicaid expansion after a set date, while keeping people who signed up before then on the coverage. For people on the Medicaid expansion who can work, employment should be mandatory, Guthrie said.

"I think we should have a work requirement if they are able-bodied," Guthrie said.

Guthrie said there was no timetable for Republicans to bring forward a new plan.

"I'm not sure what's going to be resolved in the next couple of weeks," Guthrie said.

When asked about a recent U.S. attack on an airbase in Syria -- which followed a chemical weapons attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government reportedly carried out against a village earlier this month -- Guthrie said Congress has to balance the U.S. government's need to respond quickly against the congressional responsibility to authorize military action.

"I think Congress should authorize, if we're going to go deeper into Syria," Guthrie said. "... I think Congress should never cede its power, as given by the founding fathers, to give approval for military action."

That power was granted Congress in 1787, at a time when the country's adversaries took weeks to communicate with armies in the field. Today, however, communication is instant, which doesn't give Congress weeks to deliberate on the use of force.

"If we'd debated (the U.S. missile attack), there would have been nothing there by the time (we) fired the missiles," Guthrie said.

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse

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