Jake Tapper and CNN pretended during the Republican presidential debate that Obamacare doesn’t exist. But Republican voters won’t follow suit. Instead, they are likely to cast their votes largely based on who looks most committed to repealing President Obama’s tenuously perched signature legislation.
The only two candidates at the debate who mentioned Obamacare as anything more than an afterthought were Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. Walker said that “you start on day one with repealing Obamacare. I'm the only one on this stage that’s actually got a plan, introduced an actual plan to repeal Obamacare on day one.” In his last words of the debate, Cruz said, “You want to know what I’ll do as president? It is real simple. We’ll kill the terrorists, we’ll repeal Obamacare, and we will defend the Constitution, every single word of it.”
At an event sponsored by Heritage Action on Friday, Cruz took another important step in positioning himself as a candidate focused on repeal. He charged that “most of the other candidates aren’t willing to fight the fight to repeal Obamacare.” Heritage Action CEO Mike Needham then asked him, “Do you support a refundable tax credit as part of a replacement to Obamacare.” Cruz replied that he is “open to considering” such an approach, “as long as it’s consistent with those principles that I laid out”—that is, “empowering patients…not a government bureaucrat.”
This is big news, because it has been clear for a long time (for reasons detailed here that any conservative alternative that can pave the way to full repeal must feature a refundable tax credit. If Cruz were to propose such a tax credit, he would undoubtedly propose one that isn’t income-tested, is refreshingly simple, encourages the use of health savings accounts, minimizes the role of the IRS, is genuinely a tax credit and not a subsidy to insurance companies, would cut federal spending in dramatic fashion, and would cut taxes even versus the pre-Obamacare status quo.
It remains to be seen which candidate will really try to seize the mantle as the anti-Obamacare candidate. But when it comes to going after Obama’s centerpiece legislation, Walker and Cruz so far look the most committed.