House Democratic leaders on Tuesday will propose a three-year extension of the soon-to-expire ObamaCare subsidies at the center of the shutdown fight.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip, will offer the legislation as an amendment to the Senate-passed spending agreement during a meeting of the Rules Committee on Tuesday night.
The amendment is all but guaranteed to fail, given the Republican majority on the Rules panel and the GOP’s long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which they’ve sought to repeal since its creation 15 years ago.
But the push is designed to put Republican lawmakers on record opposing an extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits, which benefit more than 20 million Americans of all political affiliations around the country. Those patients are facing huge spikes in premiums and other out-of-pocket health care costs if Congress doesn’t intervene before Jan. 1.
“House Republicans: Welcome back from your taxpayer-funded, seven-week vacation,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol shortly before the Rules Committee was set to meet. “You now have an opportunity to actually take some action in an area of this health care crisis by working with Democrats, before the Rules Committee this evening, to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
The ACA tax credits were adopted in 2010, with the creation of ObamaCare, and expanded in 2021 and 2022, under former President Biden, in response to the economic downturn during the COVID pandemic. It’s those enhanced subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, and Democrats had demanded that Republicans address the issue as a condition of reopening the government during the history-making shutdown.
The Democrats’ strategy crumbled over the weekend, however, when a group of eight senators — seven Democrats and one independent — endorsed a deal to help Republicans end the shutdown without any GOP concessions on extending the ACA subsidies.
The surprise development infuriated liberal Democrats on and off Capitol Hill, with some calling for the ouster of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Although Schumer opposed the bipartisan deal, his critics say he was responsible for keeping his troops united, and his failure to do so means he lacks the mettle to remain atop the party.
Jeffries has rejected those criticisms, saying Schumer fought “valiantly” for health care throughout the shutdown — a message he amplified again on Tuesday.
Republicans, though, are facing their own internal battles over the future of the ACA subsidies. While most GOP lawmakers in Congress oppose virtually all elements of ObamaCare — including the enhanced tax credits, which they want to see expire — a number of more moderate Republicans are urging GOP leaders to extend the subsidies for the sake of keeping health care affordable for millions of people, including their own constituents.
“We need to deal, as Republicans, with the health care issue. We just can’t let the ObamaCare thing lapse and do nothing and people have no health care or have to pay double,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) told Fox News over the weekend. “That’s wrong, it’s counterproductive [and] it’s going to hurt us politically.”
Given those dynamics, many Democrats believe that, while they might have lost the battle over the ACA subsidies in the shutdown fight, they’re poised to win the larger war if Republicans don’t address the issue and face a backlash in next year’s midterm elections.
Indeed, the Democrats’ strategy was successful in making health care a topic of national discussion. And Democratic leaders are vowing to take that message into the midterms, beginning with Tuesday night’s proposal to extend the ACA subsidies for three years.
“What the hell is wrong with these people?” Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, told reporters Tuesday night. “How can you not extend these tax benefits for people who are in such desperate need?”
