How the PPACA subsidies fight could play out

The question then becomes whether Republicans would prefer to back off and pass a “clean” subsidies extension — one allowing subsidies to continue in all states and doing nothing else — or to hold on and attempt to blame Obama for the chaos.

The outcome comes down to a very simple question: Will Republicans consider a subsidies fix a “must-pass” bill? If so, they’ll back off and allow a simple fix through the 2016 election to pass, probably with mostly Democratic votes. That is, plenty of Republicans might be very happy to have subsidies restored as long as they don’t have to vote for it.

Then again, Republicans may prefer to hold off and see what happens. They probably would lose the public opinion battle — after all, the president (who always has the bigger microphone) can wave around a one-page bill that would save the insurance of millions of people, while Republicans would have to argue that it’s really the president’s fault because he wouldn’t sign their more complicated bill. They might not care, though.

We’ve seen similar cases in the last Congress: Republicans eventually decided to allow Superstorm Sandy relief and the Violence Against Women Act to pass, while they never allowed votes on a comprehensive immigration plan or prohibiting employer discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or identity. In each case, most Republicans wanted to oppose the measure if there was a vote, though there were enough votes to pass it anyway. The question was whether enough Republicans wanted them to pass while publicly voting “no.” And they probably didn’t know what they would do until the situation actually played out.

My guess is that there’s a very good chance that if this does happen (the court may, and should, rule that the administration has read the law properly), Republicans would be under very heavy pressure to allow a simple fix to pass, and would probably give in. But it’s hardly certain.

1. Specifically, it would eliminate the words “established by the state” at one point in the law. The King plaintiffs say those words in one clause mean that only state-run exchanges are eligible for subsidies; the administration maintains that read in the full context of the bill, they do no such thing. The Court will decide which is correct, but if those words are eliminated it wouldn’t matter.

2. A Republican majority (but not a filibuster-proof majority) in the Senate complicates matter further — coordination becomes even more complicated — but the basic situation is still the same.