Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that he’s seen no formal proposal to overhaul the Affordable Care Act (ACA) despite President Trump’s latest call to nix the program and to direct the funds, instead, into the pockets of the American people.
“We don’t have a formal proposal,” Bessent said in an interview on ABC News’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, when asked about Trump’s recent remarks.
Trump on Saturday appeared to wade into the ongoing shutdown debate over enhanced ACA subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year, raising health insurance premiums for millions of Americans.
Extending the subsidies has been Senate Democrats’ central demand over the past nearly 6 weeks, during which they voted 14 times to block a GOP proposal to reopen the government.
“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social.
“In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, ObamaCare,” he continued.
Stephanopoulos pressed Bessent on the lack of a formal plan to overhaul the ACA.
“I’m a little confused because the president been posting about that overnight and into this morning, but you’re not proposing that to the Senate right now?” the ABC anchor asked Bessent on Saturday.
“We’re not proposing it to the Senate right now, no,” Bessent replied.
When Stephanopoulos asked why the president was posting about the proposal, Bessent stressed the need first to reopen the government before negotiating with Democrats over their health care demands.
“George, you know, the president’s posting about it, but again, we have got to get the government reopened before, you know, we do this. We are not going to negotiate with the Democrats until they reopen the government,” Bessent said. “It’s very simple. Reopen the government, then we can have a discussion.”
