Lets say the GOP succeed in repealing the affordable care act, turn medicare into a voucher program and turn medicaid into a block grant program by using budget reconciliation.
It is my understanding that you have to reduce the debt to use reconciliation (correct me if I’m wrong), and I believe it can’t be used for social security.
So if the GOP takes them away, can the democrats bring them back by tying them in with a tax hike, creating a budget surplus for these programs?
IIRC, isn’t the point that they cannot change the program with budget reconciliation. All they can do is make the spending (budget, law) something like " …as of September 1st 2017 no more money will be spent on insurance exchange subsidies."
The logic of this is that the program is dead in the water that date, which would provide the drop-dead (sorry) urgency to come up with a replacement law. If the Democrats oppose it, or the Tea Party types say “too socialist”, if any group refuses to pass a replacement program into law, then the existing program stops and all sorts of uninsured chaos ensues. Doctors are not paid, patients are turned away, medicare stops working for the recently entitled higher-earners, insurance is cancelled because the subsidies at not paid, etc. This demonstrates the government’s dedication to carrying out their promise, and lights a fire under congress to agree on a replacement ASAP. But, the replacement “You now have vouchers, Medicare is calculated as block grants, etc.” would need to be a separate 60% law.
I don’t know US politics that well, but I don’t think congress can pass random budgets whenever they feel like it. The budget is the spending for the year. (Although I’m sure there’s a provision for an emergency budget change, but would that be under the 50%-only reconciliation process, or the 60% in the senate regular legislation?)