Ronald Reagan once quipped that “nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.”

He could have been talking about the effort to extend — for a second time — former President Joe Biden’s Affordable Care Act-enhanced tax credits, a set of extremely generous federal health insurance subsidies intended to help Americans get through the COVID-19 crisis.

That crisis ended two years ago. Biden’s extra help, enacted by a Democratic-majority Congress in 2021 and extended in 2022, is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Yet Democrats and a coalition of health insurance companies are now demanding it be made permanent.

It’s a bad idea. Like other pandemic measures, it’s time for these temporary handouts to end.

Biden’s expansions greatly increased the generosity and availability of the existing Affordable Care Act tax credit for people who purchase their health insurance through an online government........

© The Hill