A former IRS official, under a congressional subpoena, said he had doubts about the administration’s rationale for funding Obamacare subsidies that are at the heart of a House Republican lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, according to a New York Times report published Sunday. His deposition was part of a Republican-led House committee investigation and, in a moment of partisan jockeying, the deposition was made public by Democrats on the committee, who sought to get ahead of a potential Republican leak, according to the Times.
The official, David Fisher, who worked for the IRS as financial risk officer, recounted in a May 11 deposition for House Ways and Means Committee investigators a January 2014 meeting during which IRS officials were taken to an Old Executive Office Building conference room. There, they were shown a Office of Management and Budget memo justifying the administration’s funding of billions of dollars in health insurance subsidies. They were not allowed to take notes or copy the memo, according the Times, and the IRS officials were also told that then-Attorney General Eric Holder had approved of the rationale.
Nevertheless, Fisher and his supervisor were not comfortable with the administration’s explanation for its authority to use Treasury Department funds for the subsidies, and had already started voicing concerns by late 2013, according to the New York Times.
The subsidies are now being challenged in a lawsuit brought by House Republicans, House v. Burwell. Earlier this month, a district court judge who was appointed by President George W. Bush sided with the Republicans’ arguments that the subsidies — which go to insurers to help keep out-of-pocket costs for certain consumers low — are illegal because they had not been appropriated by Congress. The Obama administration claims that it has the authority to pay for the subsidies through provisions in the U.S. tax code, while arguing that Republicans have no standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
Republicans are now asserting that Fisher’s testimony proves there was enough uncertainty over paying for the subsidies to show that the Obama administration is in fact acting illegally.
“Our investigation is revealing,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the House Ways and Means Committee Chair, told the Times. “The more we learn, the more it’s clear that high-level administration officials knowingly circumvented Congress and undermined the Constitution.”
The Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, are defending the law and countering that the Republicans are overplaying the revelation of the 2014 meeting.
“The deposition only reinforces that the administration looked at this diligently and reached a conclusion,” Rep. Sander M. Levin (MI), the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, told the Times. “The Republicans just have this kind of conspiratorial notion, but I think they are out to sink the A.C.A. and they don’t really care what technique they use.”
