House Republicans are releasing their plans for the 2020 election season, and they’ll keep pushing to repeal Obamacare and chip away at the exploding national debt.
“The first thing we would do is make sure our debt is taken care of,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said during a party meeting in Baltimore, according to Bloomberg. The main goal of the meeting was to work on the House GOP’s agenda for the election year.
That could be a pretty tall task, though, as reports this week showed the annual budget deficit hitting $1 trillion in August, the 11th month of the budget year. That is an 18.8% increase over the same period of time in 2018. The national debt has skyrocketed past $22.5 trillion.
Budget experts are projecting a surplus in September, which could mean ending the budget year under $1 trillion, but the Congressional Budget Office sees the deficit topping $1 trillion in 2020 and continuing above that mark for the next decade, according to The Associated Press.
One way the GOP plans to chip away at the troublesome debt issue is by repealing Obamacare, according to McCarthy. Democrats point to their defense of the Affordable Care Act as the reason for their House takeover in the 2018 election.
And they aren’t backing down as Democratic presidential candidates, during the third debate Democratic primary debate Thursday, announced an increased effort to expand the government’s role in health care.
Republicans were so close to repealing Obamacare in 2017, but no votes from GOP Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain stymied the effort.
“We were one vote short of entitlement reform,” McCarthy said. “We will have the opportunity with a Republican Senate and President Trump to change it once and for all and make America stronger.”
“We want to protect pre-existing conditions. We want to lower the cost of health care while raising quality overall,” McCarthy said. “Democrats are offering Medicare for All. They want to end health care” for millions of Americans who currently have coverage.