ANOTHER PERMANT EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE STATE

…is coming after the shutdown is over

by Ralph Bristol

by Ralph Bristol, Facebook, Oct. 6, 2025- I reported earlier that my own Congressman, John Rose, as much as told Channel 5 he would vote to extent the “enhanced” Obamacare tax credits after the government reopens.  The capitulation doesn’t stop with at the lower ranks, with Rose. 

Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, one of the top tier House Republicans has made it clear that his party will capitulate to Democrat demands on the Democrats’ enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits that Biden Democrats opened to incomes of all levels and increased the taxpayer subsidy in the American Rescue Plan, passed in 2021, after America no longer needed rescued from the Covid-19 crisis because President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” in early 2020 to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. 

By the time Biden Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, which eliminated the 400% of the Federal Poverty Level ceiling and opened eligibility to the entire population, and increased the tax credits for those below 400% of FPL, the Covid-19 crisis was over the hump.  Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved for emergency use shortly after the 2020 election, which saw the father of the vaccines defeated in the election and many of his followers turning against it, some of them dying, including two of my friends.

The country was not entirely back to normal when Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, but it had made enough progress that no Republicans felt obligated to vote for that act or the follow-up Inflation Reduction Act, which was supposed to cure the inflation created by the $2.2 trillion Cares Act and the economic shut down, both under Trump, and Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. 

The world effectively suffered two pandemics simultaneously, one health, the other economic.  We responded to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic with a pandemic of economic shutdowns, which deprived the world of the products and services it needed, even as government flooded consumers with money to buy the products and services that could not be produced.

The resulting inflation could not be solved with even more government spending, including increased personal subsidies for healthcare, and massive subsidies for alternative energy, the two major pillars of the comically named “Inflation Reduction Act.”  One of the provisions of that act was to extend the tax credits created by the American Rescue Plan but only until the end of 2025. It was passed in August of 2022, when the unemployment rate stood at 3.7%.  Any “emergency” need for additional health insurance subsidies had long passed by then.  This was the third step in trying to expand a new welfare program, Obamacare, from two-thirds of the non-retired population to the entire population, a reach Obama himself found too far. 

To be clear, Obamacare is welfare.  Unlike Medicare, into which Americans pay a payroll tax during their entire working career before they are eligible for the insurance, and then still have to pay a sliding scale premium, Obamacare required no prior contribution to the program to be eligible, and the sliding scale premiums, for most enrollees, are as low or lower than the premiums for most Medicare enrollees.  

Obamacare is welfare. Have we now expanded welfare to eliminate any poverty requirement at all, not even 400% of FPL? We will if we open the enhanced Obamacare tax credits to the entire population.  What’s next? What will stop Democrats from allowing the entire population to buy groceries with food stamps. If healthcare is a right, certainly food is too!

Think of the possibilities.  Every year, when you file your taxes, you get a food stamp card in return.  Your card will be linked either to your bank account or your credit card of your choice and you will buy your groceries with the card.  If you make less than the FPL, you will pay nothing for the groceries, up to a certain amount each month.  If you make 200% of FPL, you will pay 50% percent of the price of the groceries and the store will automatically bill the government for the other 50%.  Your subsidy will decrease as your income, reported to the IRS, increases, and when you start making $250,000 a year or more, guess what happens?  

Thaaat’s right. Welcome to the era of means-tested grocery prices, because “food is a right,” and that means everyone should have the food they need, and those who can afford more should pay more so those who can only afford less can pay less. 

I almost forgot to tell you what the esteemed Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio had to say about extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies when he was interviewed this weekend on the Chris Stirewalt Show on Seirus XM. 

Stirewalt: The Senate seems to be cooking up a deal that would include an extension of those (enhanced) Obamacare subsidies. That’s billions of dollars in order to reorder the government. Is that something you would support?

Turner: (After first insisting the shutdown was unrelated to the healthcare debate): “…now this debate over what is to occur in healthcare and these additional subsidies, as everybody has said, this does need to be addressed. It impacts my state and there are portions of these subsidies that do need to continue. They do impact families There are ways in which this needs to be addressed and I think this is an important debate. People have made a commitment that it should go forward, but this is completely unrelated – the fact that they have shut the government down in this shows they don’t have a plan….

Stirewalt did not press the issue.  

Yes, Democrats do have a plan, and their plan has apparently succeeded.  Soon, the Democrats will appear to have yielded.  Chuck Schumer will allow enough Democrats to vote for a clean bill that does not include an extension of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits, just as Republican insist.  The Republicans will have won the shutdown fight!  

Then, they will agree to a “new and improved” version of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that still have a cutoff, although more generous than the Original Obamacare cutoff of 400% of FPL – probably 600%, since anything above that is going to be very little savings. 

And Republicans will prove that they can’t cut spending – except on illegal immigrants, which will get us nowhere – and the American welfare state will experience another permanent expansion – under the Republican’s watch. 

Our only hope now is that John Tamny is right, that too much spending and debt are not symptoms of a failing state – they are proof of a thriving economy!  This could not happen if America were not filthy rich and getting richer and all we need to do is concentrate on getting richer and we will be so rich that all the debt in the world won’t matter!

We can only hope – and maybe pray. That can’t hurt.

Ralph Bristol is the former long-time morning talk radio host broadcasting on Supertalk 99.7 WTN. He was one of the less provocative and bombastic of conservative radio personalities, more thoughtful and grounded in conservative ideas. He left talk radio in 2018 and retired. He lives in Nashville. 

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