‘There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants,” President Obama said in pitching his signature national health-care program to a joint session of Congress. “This, too, is false.”
In a seminal moment of the early feisty days of the Tea Party era, Republican representative Joe Wilson shouted, “You lie!”
Now, President Biden is looking, in effect, to prove Wilson was right about the law.
Biden has announced plans to use administrative action to make DACA recipients eligible for Medicaid and Obamacare. DACA, of course, is the administrative amnesty that Obama imposed after Congress refused to pass the Dream Act. The recipients are several hundred thousand people who illegally came here, or claim to have come here, when they were minors. The Obama administration simply decided to stop enforcing the immigration laws against this category of immigrants. Needless to say, Congress has never acted to formally grant legal status to DACA recipients, and the program has been subject to legal action since Obama first took executive action.
Obamacare limits eligibility to those who are citizens or those who are “lawfully present.” Because DACA recipients lack legal status, they should not be eligible. In fact, the Obama Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explained in great detail why these immigrants wouldn’t be eligible. Now, Biden is making them eligible anyway. In a fact sheet, the White House says, “The Department of Health and Human Services will shortly propose a rule amending the definition of ‘lawful presence,’ for purposes of Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage, to include DACA recipients.” The administration aims to have the rule released by the end of the month, because “every day counts.”
In political terms, the administration obviously hopes to create more facts on the ground that will pressure Congress to pass a version of the Dream Act if DACA ultimately falls in the courts.
The move is part of a familiar pattern with Biden of issuing executive actions to satisfy certain constituents, only to demagogue any legal hurdles as coming from a rogue right-wing Supreme Court. Other examples include the eviction moratorium, the large-employer vaccine mandate, and his student-loan-forgiveness program.
Without seeing the actual language of the rule, it is difficult to consider how vulnerable this action is to legal challenge. After all, Obamacare was notorious for granting sweeping discretionary powers to the secretary of Health and Human Services, yet everyone was absolutely clear that it had nothing to do with DACA recipients.
If anyone is still so naïve, it’s another example of progressive administrations playing by Animal House rules — “you f***ed up, you trusted us.”