Last week, President Donald Trump left Washington D.C. for Mar-a-Lago, and members of Congress scattered around the country headed home for the holiday break. But let’s not forget that there are a number of very big, unresolved issues that they’ve left behind.
And those issues involve the lives of millions of very vulnerable people, whose fates are, right now, in limbo. Here’s a quick list:
As I write, the Trump administration is considering moving forward with an all but unthinkable sounding plan to separate parents and kids if they are intercepted while entering the United States without legal permission.
Hundreds of thousands of “dreamers” don’t know if they will receive legal protections before their protected status expires for good.
Long-term funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program remains mostly unresolved – and the program benefits nine million children.
The repeal of the individual mandate as part of tax reform could result in millions uninsured – and there’s no telling whether Republicans will agree to try to stabilize the insurance markets.
We’ve become inured to the cruelty of it all. There are so many things the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans do that could or will result in unbelievable harm to many Americans, it sometimes seems impossible to keep up with it all.
Let’s run though all of them.
Undocumented families: The Post reports that as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to crack down on unauthorized immigration to the United States, authorities may begin to separate parents and children if they are caught entering the U.S.
The backstory is that in November, the number of undocumented families intercepted increased by 45 percent. So now the new policy is designed to dissuade families from trying to enter. As one DHS official put it: “People aren’t going to stop coming unless there are consequences to illegal entry.”
This is not how it works now. Families are either housed together or released pending the resolution of their status. Moreover, as of now, when children are caught by authorities entering the United States without legal permission, they are frequently turned over to a parent, even if that parent is not documented. The Department of Health and Human Services, which arranges for that, does not inform ICE about that. That would change if this plan is enacted, effectively resulting in more children remaining in federal custody.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will decide on whether to go forward with these in the near future.
CHIP: Congress had allowed funding to the program to lapse. Only after tax reform passed and quotes of desperate parents appeared in newspapers did Congress turn their attention to the matter. So they used the short-term bill funding the government to temporarily extend CHIP funding, too.
But the reprieve is so temporary, it’s hard to believe it will relieve people’s concerns about whether they will be able to take their children to the doctor in the future. CHIP is a popular program with bi-partisan support, so it’s hoped that it will be funded on a longer term basis shortly. But Republicans have already attempted to turn it into a political hot potato: When the House Republicans passed a five-year CHIP funding bill last fall, they also attached cuts to the Affordable Care Act to it, with the result that no Democrat voted for it. So we don’t know for sure what will happen next year.
The dreamers: These are the people brought to the United States illegally as children. The Obama administration granted them temporary reprieve from deportation and allowed them to reauthorize work permits every two years under an executive action, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which now covers about 690,000 people.
In September, Trump ended DACA, but on a six-month delay, saying he wanted Congress to come up with a permanent solution. But Republicans declined to act to protect them as part of the end-of-year funding deal, despite Democratic protests. That means 690,000 people – who did nothing wrong other than have their parents bring them to the United States as children – literally do not know if they will still have protections, and potentially face upended lives.
It seems likely some sort of resolution will be found. Frank Sharry, the executive director of the pro-immigration America’s Voice, had a good Twitter thread predicting a resolution: Basically, Democrats have a lot of leverage because Republicans will need their votes to accomplish must-pass legislation next year, and Republicans may be loath to get tagged with doing nothing for the dreamers in an election year. Still, the dreamers are in a situation of terrible uncertainty right now.
Health care: The repeal of the mandate as part of tax reform will almost certainly cause premiums to spike in the future. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will increase the number of uninsured people by 4 million in 2019 and 13 million people by 2027.
Over time, fewer young and healthy people are likely to sign up, which will result in a sicker – and more expensive to cover – pool of people seeking coverage, which will cause further prices increases, which will drive more people out of the market. It’s possible that the impact of mandate repeal will not be as bad as we expect, but we just don’t know. If it is bad, will Republicans agree to Congressional action to stabilize the markets? We don’t know that either. Trump keeps saying Obamacare has now been “repealed,” which, while false (nine million just enrolled), doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that Republicans will be willing to take constructive action.
All of this leaves millions of people hanging, and we simply can’t say with any confidence what will happen to resolve all of these situations.
Happy Holidays to all.
Special to The Washington Post, Helaine Olen is a contributor to the Plum Line blog and the author of “Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.” Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic and many other publications. She serves on the advisory board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
