Politics and Money

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House GOP Votes Against Putting All Staff on Obamacare Exchanges

By Eliana Johnson

November 17, 2014 4:55 PM

House Republicans last week voted down an amendment that would have required all of their staff members to purchase insurance from the federal health exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act.

The voice vote took place behind closed doors and has received little public attention. The dispute is one more rift between right-leaning members of the caucus and some members of leadership, albeit not a hugely consequential one.

In the Senate, a similar vote was kicked to next month or, potentially, next year, but in the House the measure was the subject of much controversy. According to Florida representative Ron DeSantis, who proposed the amendment, it stirred up “a lot of really, really vocal opposition,” including a “no” vote from House speaker John Boehner.

Boehner has already required all of his staff members to join the exchanges. His spokesman, Michael Steel, declined to comment on his vote. “The speaker wants to repeal Obamacare entirely, making this a moot point,” Steel says.

Whether staffers have to join the exchanges has been a matter of some dispute. DeSantis, a Harvard-educated lawyer, and others argue that the law places all congressional staffers on the exchanges, while the executive branch has allowed individual members to decide whether their staffers fall under the requirement or not.

DeSantis says the veil of anonymity allowed members to get away with what would have been a politically problematic vote. Had the vote been tallied publicly, he says, the measure would have passed.

The origins of the debate go back years, to the debate over the law before its passage in 2010. Iowa senator Chuck Grassley successfully proposed an amendment that required lawmakers and their employees to join the exchanges created by the law. “The more that Congress experiences the laws it passes, the better,” Grassley said at the time. His amendment applies to all those “employed by the official office of a member of Congress,” raising the question of whether staff for congressional leadership and committees, as opposed to employees of each congressman’s personal office, are included.

Enter the Office of Personnel Management, which ruled that individual members can decide what “individual office” means, allowing Republicans to exempt some of their personal-office employees. The DeSantis amendment would have taken away that freedom, forcing all Republican staffers onto the exchanges.

Louisiana’s David Vitter proposed a similar measure in the Republican Senate conference, which will take up the issue in December or January.

The distinction doesn’t matter as much as it might have, if? Vitter and others had gotten their way during one Obamacare debate last year. The OPM has also ruled that congressional staffers on the Obamacare exchange can continue to receive contributions to their premiums as they did when they have federal-employee health plans. The law doesn’t explicitly provide for the payment of those contributions, though, leading a number of Republican members to push bills halting those contributions on the grounds that it meant special treatment for congressional employees. Those efforts haven’t succeeded so far.

DeSantis, Vitter, and others argue that, aside from the obvious matter of optics, that as Republicans rail against the president’s lawlessness on immigration and other issues, they too should be faithful to the letter of the law, and that the law requires them to force their staffs onto the exchanges.