Breitbart News reported that House Republicans have offered a new deal to the White House to end the fiscal stalemate. The GOP plan, authored primarily by House Budget Chair Rep. Paul Ryan according to Hill sources, would meet Obama’s demands in exchange for negotiations on a longer-term budget agreement.
At least two high-ranking Capitol Hill sources have told Breitbart News that Ryan’s plan would also help protect Obamacare as it is currently implemented.
Ryan’s office deny the claims. “What your sources are attempting to attribute to Congressman Ryan is not accurate,” Kevin Seifert, Ryan’s spokesman, said in an email.
But the Capitol Hill conservative sources are adamant Ryan offered at least two things that they say would mitigate some of Obamacare’s hardest-hitting effects on certain communities that are needed for the GOP to take the law down in the end.
The high-ranking conservative source said that this deal will ensure America has “Obamacare forever” and that Ryan’s “pro union votes are really coming to light now.”
At a meeting on Friday morning, the sources said Ryan’s plan was presented to a group of members. Ryan’s plan would grant President Barack Obama a no-strings-attached “clean” debt ceiling increase for six weeks and acquiesce to Obama’s latest demand that Republicans also pass a Continuing Resolution to end the partial government shutdown.
The plan was pitched to a room full of members of the House GOP caucus. Not only would Ryan’s plan amount to a GOP capitulation on the debt ceiling and budget, it would mitigate certain effects of Obamacare to help labor unions and members of the business community.
The grand bargain Ryan is attempting to negotiate would include a repeal of the medical device sales tax, a part of Obamacare even liberal Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) supports removing.
The high-ranking sources also claimed Ryan was trying to negotiate a proposal that would increase from 30 to 39 the number of weekly hours worked to qualify as a full-time worker that would trigger the mandate that employers provide health insurance or pay a $2,000 per employee fine. The sources described this proposal as a hand-out to labor unions. The 30 hour threshold in ObamaCare annoyed people like Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. and prompted him recently to speak out against Obamacare.
The source also said Ryan’s “grand bargain” would increase the number of employees a company may have without providing health insurance from 50 up to 100. This would mitigate effects on the larger members of the small business community, who are currently some of the most ardent opponents of Obamacare.
Ultimately, one of the sources says, such proposals end up keeping Obamacare the law of the land “forever” as it would take away from momentum against it.
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