Podcast: Play in new window | Play in new window (Duration: 13:14 — 6.1MB)
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DOW – 106 = 18,096
SPX – 9 = 2098
NAS – 12 = 4967
10 YR YLD un = 2.12%
OIL + 1.26 = 51.78
Private-sector employment gains continued in February but at a slower pace than in the prior month. Automatic Data Processing Inc. reported Wednesday that employers added 212,000 jobs last month. On Friday, we’ll get the non-farm payroll report for February; it is expected the economy added about 235,000 jobs last month.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Treasury Department will exhaust its capacity to borrow in October or November if the debt limit isn’t raised. The debt limit is suspended until March 15. After that date, so-called extraordinary measures available to the Treasury to keep borrowing include deferring new investments in federal retirement and disability funds.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the fate of Obamacare for the second time in three years, weighing an attack on tax credits designed to help millions of people afford insurance. The Court heard arguments today in the case of King v. Burwell, an appeal by four Virginia residents who would block the subsidies in at least 34 states. The fight centers on a four-word phrase that has become a linchpin of the law. The measure says people qualify for tax credits when they buy insurance on an online marketplace “established by the state.†The challengers say that phrase means subsidies aren’t available in dozens of states that declined to set up their own exchanges, as the marketplaces are known. Residents of those states instead use the federal healthcare.gov system.
The interplay between the justices and the attorneys generally aligned with partisan expectations and covered familiar ground, the meaning and context of a few key words in the statute and what Congress was trying to do when it wrote the law. The justices spent a great deal of time discussing federalism; specifically, whether the plaintiffs’ reading of the Affordable Care Act would cause inappropriate federal coercion of state governments.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the decisive vote to uphold the health-care law in 2012, asked only a handful of questions and gave little indication how he will vote. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted to invalidate the statute three years ago, asked questions of both sides in the one-hour, 20-minute hearing. He said limiting the tax credits to 16 states would create a “serious constitutional problem.†In other words, nobody really has a handle on how the Supremes will rule.
A decision halting the credits might unravel the Affordable Care Act, making other core provisions ineffective and potentially causing the market for individual insurance policies to collapse in much of the country. As many as 9.6 million people could lose their health insurance if the disputed subsidies were invalidated. And that could make a mess of everybody’s insurance.
