Congress
15 years into Obamacare, the GOP health care message is as muddled as ever
With key Obamacare tax credits set to expire within weeks, Democrats have unified behind a simple message: extend the subsidies and keep health insurance premiums from spiking for more than 20 million Americans.
Republicans, meanwhile, have engaged in a wide-ranging blame game while scrambling to coalesce behind an easily digestible plan to lower health care costs. That struggle comes to a head this week as House leaders move to put what they hope will be a consensus GOP plan up for a vote.
House Republican leaders chose a narrow set of proposals to include in that plan, arguing they lacked broad agreement for a more comprehensive undertaking as they seek to satisfy competing GOP factions, including vulnerable Republicans who’ve argued they will lose their seats if the Affordable Care Act subsidies aren’t extended.
The upshot is that there is no clear, unified GOP message on health care going into the year-end deadline when the tax credits expire — and no guarantee that Republicans will be able to pass anything this week to address the loss of beefed-up subsidies instituted under former President Joe Biden.
“I expect people are going to have an opportunity to vote their conscience and then go defend their votes back home like we always do,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters about the GOP’s health care strategy.
Across the Capitol, there are already clear signs of unease. While Senate Republicans mostly united behind a plan that would expand health savings accounts as an alternative, four GOP senators crossed party lines to advance a Democratic proposal that would simply extend the Obamacare subsidies for three years.
Now rank-and-file Republicans in both chambers are privately strategizing about how to pull off an unlikely 11th-hour deal to avert a health care price shock that has triggered significant anxiety throughout the party about the political blowback they could face in the 2026 midterms. House GOP moderates negotiated an amendment vote that could tack a subsidy extension onto the leadership-backed health bill, but that vote is expected to fail and only serve as political cover for the vulnerable House Republicans.
That’s because top GOP leaders have resisted scrambling a 15-year-old message their party has been loath to abandon: Obamacare is a costly disaster, and Americans need better options.
“There’s a couple of [issues] that split our conference — that’s one of them,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said last week.
The dissonance within the GOP ranks comes as Democrats remain confident their push to preserve the status quo will resonate with voters — especially after making it a central focus of the shutdown fight that ended last month.
Party leaders have managed to keep Democrats largely unified behind a three-year extension of the expiring subsidies. Every Senate Democrat voted to advance that proposal Thursday. In the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has managed so far to keep the vast majority of his members from endorsing compromise extension proposals that purple-district Republicans have introduced.
“Our message is simple: Republicans have created a health care crisis for American families who are seeing their health insurance rise by 100 to 300 percent, and the solution has been in front of us for a while,” said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), chair of the centrist New Democrats.
President Donald Trump, the GOP’s master of viral messaging, has not been especially helpful when it comes to health care. Trump has repeatedly referred to Obamacare as a “disaster” and railed against insurance companies who collect the federal subsidies — echoing a favorite conservative talking point.
But he has yet to lay out a specific alternative beyond giving “money to the people” directly to buy health care. Trump gave a nod to the issue during the annual Congressional Ball at the White House Thursday, addressing “Democrats” in the room: “We’re going to start working together on health care. I really predict that.”
While some of the Republicans present took the comments to mean Trump might be open to striking a so-far elusive health care deal in January, many Democrats doubt he will be willing to come to the table and extend a framework he has railed against for a decade. Moreover, the party is preparing to use the issue — and Trump’s refusal to engage — to hammer Republicans in the midterms as they show vulnerability on cost-of-living concerns.
“He doesn’t understand the hell that people are going through as they prepare to pay these hugely high health care costs,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of Senate Democratic leadership.
On Capitol Hill this week, familiar divides are likely to play out as Republicans come to terms with the impending expiration of the subsidies, which will mean a much smaller swath of Americans will be eligible for tax credits. The Congressional Budget Office projects millions will choose to drop their coverage rather than pay higher premiums.
Already concerns about political blowback forced House GOP leaders to backtrack from their initial strategy of simply allowing the Obamacare subsidies to expire. As part of their efforts to pass a package of measures meant to erode insurance regulations enacted in the ACA, “the process will allow” for an amendment vote on extending the subsidies, a Republican leadership aide said Friday.
But that has rankled conservatives who have publicly criticized those Republicans who are supporting an extension, and top party leaders do not expect the amendment will be adopted.
“My Democratic colleagues broke health care, and now they are down here saying we must give more money to insurance companies,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Friday on the House floor, “and any Republican who goes along with that needs to answer for doing the same thing.”
Republicans have health care plans, he added, but “what we don’t have is the backbone and the will power to stand up and deliver.”
Scores of Roy’s colleagues, however, have taken a more nuanced view — that even though they share concerns about the cost of the subsidies and the legacy of Obamacare, they are frustrated their party appears to be confronting the issue only at the last minute with family budgets at stake for thousands of their constituents.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) said last week he wasn’t completely happy with the situation and that Republicans “need to move this along.”
“A lot of people are receiving this health care — they don’t need the rug pulled out from under them,” Meuser said. “Definitely should have been done a ways back, we could say, because of the shutdown. But we’ve got to do everything we can and then do more. “I don’t see how we just leave things in limbo,” he added.
Rep. Max Miller issued a subpoena to his former father-in-law and fellow Ohio Republican, Sen. Bernie Moreno, in the latest escalation of a long-running family legal drama.
Pamela MacAdams, an attorney for Miller, reported to the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court Monday that three subpoenas were served in Miller’s divorce case, according to court records. A person with knowledge of the subpoenas granted anonymity to comment on them said that two were sent to Moreno and his wife, Bridget.
Their daughter, Emily Moreno, was married to Miller, and the two remain embroiled in a nasty legal battle.
Spokespeople for Miller, Emily Moreno and Bernie Moreno did not immediately return requests for comment. TMZ first reported on the subpoenas.
Miller is seeking reelection in a competitive district, and his campaign has been marred by accusations of domestic abuse against Emily Moreno and their daughter. Miller has repeatedly denied the allegations and chose to remain in the race despite other Republican lawmakers pressuring him to withdraw his campaign.
The House Ethics Committee, which began an inquiry into Miller after Miller asked to be investigated, is currently in a preelection blackout period. During that period, which will continue through the midterms, the Ethics Committee doesn’t take any action against sitting members who could return next Congress.
Congress
Trump declares $1B canceled in ‘pocket rescission’ in another affront to Congress’ funding power
President Donald Trump informed congressional leaders Friday that he has unilaterally canceled almost $1 billion without Congress’ consent — employing a budget maneuver many lawmakers consider illegal.
In a move that will almost certainly set up an ugly government funding battle after the midterms, Trump has again claimed the power to execute a so-called “pocket rescission” to nix money Congress has already enacted. The money his administration will claw back is for for immigration services, support to foreign countries, education programs, health research efforts and assistance for businesses owned by minorities.
By law, the president is allowed to send Congress a request to rescind federal funding, then withhold that money for 45 days while lawmakers consider whether to approve, reject or ignore it. Trump administration officials also argue they have the power to cancel funding without any congressional action by sending Congress a rescission request with less than 45 days left in the fiscal year. The argument is that the money automatically gets canceled on Sept. 30, when funding lapses at the end of the fiscal year.
Last year, Trump canceled $4.9 billion in foreign aid.
The Senate’s top Republican appropriator, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, immediately blasted the move as illegal, saying in a statement Friday night that “any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
“This move shows that OMB intentionally withheld these funds for months to execute this unlawful cancellation of appropriations that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law,” Collins added, pledging to work with other lawmakers “to address these illegal actions.”
Collins and other appropriators have already been on high alert in recent days, pressing multiple agencies about funding officials have yet to spend ahead of the expiration date.
Democrats are finally catching on to how to talk to young male voters in the lead-up to the midterms, but the party can still up its game, one battleground senator and potential 2028er said Friday.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) has been one of his party’s most outspoken critics on its handling of outreach to young men, who swung right and helped deliver the White House and both chambers of Congress to Republicans in 2024.
The party is now “definitely moving in the right direction,” Gallego said Friday.
“Like back in the day, I was like the only one,” putting out positions on men, Gallego said at a Washington event on young American men. “Now, like, it seems like everyone every week is coming out with a new position, new idea, which is great.”
Gallego has criticized Democrat’s failure to highlight mens’ struggles and their tendency to over-police mens’ ideas. But there are signs the political winds have shifted in his party’s favor.
A new Cygnal poll released with the event of men ages 18-30 who say they’re the most determined to vote revealed Democrats’ generic ballot lead over Republicans at 57%-40%, Blue Light News reported. The poll also said nearly 40 percent of respondents said they feel their lives are off track.
“We need to take the opportunity to invest in that portion of this country, to say that we care about them and actually try to change the trajectory of what’s happening with men in this country,” Gallego said at the symposium.
Still, the path for specific legislation targeting the needs of this demographic faces an incredibly tight calendar this Congress and is uncertain in the political landscape of next year.
A proposal from Gallego and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to establish a men’s health office within the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, has not advanced. Nor has bipartisan legislation from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who also spoke at the event, targeting education outcomes, college investment transparency and dyslexic student support.
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