Author: Kim Berard
Although most ACA enrollees/potential enrollees make their 2026 enrollment decisions assuming that expanded premium subsidies will not be renewed, the renewal of these subsidies has not been completely terminated. The House narrowly approved an extension last week, armed with a recall petition and 17 Republican members of Congress willing to oppose his leadership. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) is also spearheading a bill to expand those limits.
Whether it will ultimately pass is uncertain, as is how/when agreement on the House bill will be reached, and the president could veto any potential extension. As Miracle Max puts it, the expanded subsidies haven't gone away, just that “most of them have.”
The seeming indifference to the concerns of the more than 20 million ACA enrollees is shocking, but it is what it is. This administration and the Republican Congress do not like SNAP, Medicaid, school lunches, or aid to starving people in third world countries. They think if you're poor, that's too bad; get a job, or a better job, and pick yourself up. There are no handouts.
If they generally oppose federal subsidies out of fiscal prudence or other guiding principles, I can respect that. I don't agree with that statement, but it's at least intellectually honest. The problem is, they're not opposed to subsidies per se; They just don't like that they go to the poor. That is, the people who need them most.
What got me interested in this was ProPublica/High Country News Survey grazing conditions on public lands. If you live in the East, you probably don't think much about ranches or public lands, but if you live in the West, you're probably very familiar with both. Nearly 50% of the land in the Western states is owned by the federal government. The range ranges from 85% in Nevada to 4% in North Dakota. Almost half of California is federal land. You might be forgiven for thinking that federal lands must be national parks, but they are small relative to lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).
according to Puplica: “The federal government allows livestock grazing on an area of public land more than twice the size of California, making ranching the largest land use in the West.” Well, you might be thinking, that's not inherently a bad thing; it's just that. We might as well do something with the land and maybe even make some money from it. Here's the problem; the federal government is actually giving up on it. Its analysis found that the grazing fees charged were a 93% discount to market prices. You read that right: ninety-three percent. This is not a discount, this is a giveaway.
Well, it's an eye-opener, but if it helps a group of ranchers struggling to survive, maybe it's not so bad; the ranch dates back to frontier days and has a certain cowboy appeal. Unfortunately, this stereotype isn't entirely true.
Puplica Established:
A handful of wealthy individuals and corporations manage most livestock on public lands. Our analysis found that approximately two-thirds of grazing acreage on BLM lands is controlled by just 10 percent of ranchers. On Forest Service lands, the top 10 percent of license holders control more than 50 percent of the grazing acreage. The largest ranchers include billionaires like Stan Kroenke and Rupert Murdoch, as well as mining companies and utility companies.
To be fair, there are plenty of small ranchers who also take advantage of grazing on federal lands; they're just not the ones responsible for the bulk of the grazing.
As if wealthy ranchers weren’t benefiting already, the Trump administration wants to increase subsidies and reduce regulations. But of course it is. Instead of being a protector of public lands, the Bureau of Land Management becomes a facilitator of public land development. Current and former BLM employees told Puplika About the political pressure put on them whenever they try to do anything that might be considered “anti-grazing.”
It’s not just ranchers. We like to think of family farmers working their land, and we provide tens of billions of dollars in aid to farmers, but, according to the Environmental Working Group:
…The vast majority of farmers do not benefit from federal farm subsidy programs, with most subsidies going to the largest and most financially secure farm operations. Small commodity farmers earn only a pittance and meat producers a pittance.[r]Fruits and vegetables are almost completely excluded from the subsidy game (i.e. they can sign up for subsidized crop insurance and often receive federal disaster payments).
Meanwhile, the Trump administration boasts that it has made “significant progress in making America’s public lands work for the American people,” which means if you want to drill for oil or gas, mine for coal, and clear forests while paying very little and not worrying about the environment, you’re in luck. But “American people” means “rich American people.”
Similarly, subsidies to the U.S. fossil fuel industry are difficult to determine, but a 2025 analysis by Oil Change International estimated annual subsidies at $31 billion, double the 2017 amount. And that was before the Big, Beautiful Act increased subsidies even further.
Don’t even get me started on how corporations and wealthy individuals manage to evade federal taxes, such as through the carried interest loophole. Not many poor people benefit from it.
Yes, maybe the expanded ACA credits may have expanded too much, and yes, there may have been some fraud in the program. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater simply by letting it die is harsh. The estimated $30 billion per year cost of subsidies is not small, but I'd rather spend it on ensuring millions of people can get/keep health insurance than give it to wealthy ranchers, farmers, or oil companies.
Kim is a former electronics marketing executive for a large blues program and editor of The Late and Regretful tincture.ionow a regular THCB contributor
