A menu of options is starting to emerge around what a compromise might look like for extending a suite of Affordable Care Act tax credits, which have become a focal point in the current government funding standoff.

With the shutdown about to enter its third week, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune continue to insist that any negotiation over the future of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies will need to happen after the government reopens.

Behind the scenes, however, Republicans on Capitol Hill and inside the Trump administration are discussing potential pathways to prevent the tax credits from expiring at the end of the year.

According to two people granted anonymity to share details about private discussions, some members of the House GOP leadership circle are having early, informal conversations with officials from the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and the Domestic Policy Council to develop a framework for a deal.

As they await President Donald Trump’s buy-in, members of House Republican leadership have discussed imposing minimum out-of-pocket premium payments for ACA enrollees, according to one of the people familiar with the internal conversations.

Ultimately, whatever they come up with has to be something not only Democrats can accept but also Republicans, who are sharply divided over whether to extend the credits at all. Some GOP lawmakers say the subsidies are fueling waste, fraud and abuse; others see political peril in letting them lapse, causing premiums to skyrocket and millions to lose health insurance.

“About 90 percent of members of our conference, they feel strongly … that Obamacare itself and the subsidies have failed,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters Friday. “It’s helped insurance companies pack their bottom line, but it’s crushed families who are paying higher premiums.”

But the increased back-channeling inside the GOP is a strong sign the administration is preparing for eventual negotiations on the tax credits and possible wider health policy changes.

“I think what we’re seeing is the dam breaking here,” said House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) on a call with reporters Friday.

Here are some of the policy options currently under consideration among Republican negotiators that could become the basis for an agreement — or, at the very least, an opening offer.

New income limits

Conservatives complain that the expansion of the tax credits under former President Joe Biden removed income caps on the credits, which had previously restricted the subsidies to individuals making below four times the poverty line.

Key GOP negotiators in the House indicate openness to imposing new income caps. They include Reps. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who are touting bipartisan legislation to extend the subsidies for a year.

Influential Democrats — such as Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray of Washington and House Ways and Means ranking member Richard Neal of Massachusetts, have not rejected this proposal out of hand. Murray, for instance, has noted that the vast majority of beneficiaries of the credit make below $200,000 already.

Several Republicans in the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus have likewise privately floated a $200,000 income cap.

Minimum out-of-pocket premiums

Paragon Health Institute, an influential conservative health policy think tank, has been hammering Republicans with data indicating there are millions of “phantom enrollees” in the ACA — individuals who don’t know they’re enrolled in plans because the premiums are fully subsidized by taxpayers. This has sparked interest among conservatives in mandating a minimum out-of-pocket payment to unlock eligibility.

“It doesn’t have to be big, but if you get a notice for a five-buck premium, all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, what?’” said Sen. Dan Sullivan in an interview. The Alaska Republican is part of a “working group” of GOP senators trying to come up with a conservative framework for extending the subsidies.

Cutting off enhanced tax credits for new enrollees

Allowing current enrollees continued access to the enhanced tax credits could emerge as a palatable compromise and blunt the impact of premium hikes set to take effect this fall. The “grandfathering” of the subsidies would likely be accompanied by other guardrails to root out waste and fraud in the health plans.

But Melanie Egorin, a professor at the University of Virginia and a former Health and Human Services official under the Biden administration, points out that policy would be particularly tough as the labor market softens and people lose their Medicaid coverage due to new work requirements enacted through the GOP megabill over the summer.

“Creating a grandfathering [mechanism] in a time where the economy is not looking so great for many Americans, feels really unfair,” she said in an interview.

New abortion restrictions

Democrats and Republicans disagree in the first place whether the tax credits truly subsidize plans that cover abortion. But influential anti-abortion groups, such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have mounted fierce campaigns to convince lawmakers and the public the plans make the procedure more affordable.

Conservatives sympathize with the argument, but the anti-abortion messaging campaign has in many ways made the policy fight more intractable. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democratic negotiator on the issue, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, have already indicated that abortion restrictions are a nonstarter for any deal on the larger issue.

The White House is pledging to fire more federal workers, the next salvo in President Donald Trump’s push to pressure Democrats to sign onto the GOP’s continuing resolution and end the government shutdown.

“OMB is making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence,” the White House Office of Management and Budget wrote Tuesday on X. “Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait.”

Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought launched their long-threatened shutdown-related layoffs last Friday, with Republicans calling the reductions in force financially prudent and faulting Democrats for forcing the administration’s hand. But the day before, Trump said at a Cabinet meeting that his administration would only cut “Democrat programs” declaring that his own party’s priorities wouldn’t be affected by White House bean counters.

“That’s the way it works,” he said. “They wanted to do this so we will give them a little taste of their own medicine.”

The White House has also used the shutdown to cut billions in climate and infrastructure funding earmarked for states that voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s election.

Most Senate Democrats have withheld supporting the GOP continuing resolution to bring Republicans to the negotiating table over extending premium tax credits within the Affordable Care Act, with open enrollment set to tee off on Nov. 1. But Republican leadership in both the White House and Congress is signaling the burden is on the holdout Democrats to act.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands and passed a clean, no strings attached budget to reopen the government and pay our federal workers,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press briefing Monday.

The messaging battle is up for grabs. American voters are more likely to fault the GOP for the shutdown, but they still trust Republicans over Democrats on the economy, according to recent polling.

The White House and OMB both did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Blue Light News.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose a massive new fee for employers seeking to hire foreign workers in high-skill fields have reenergized congressional Republicans’ efforts to pass legislation strengthening the controversial visa program.

After years of dissipating interest inside the GOP to tackle any immigration policy not directly tied to border security, the current moment appears ripe for a legislative breakthrough around expanding the use of so-called H-1B visas, which have propelled the country’s tech industry for decades.

Opponents say the 35-year-old program siphons jobs from American citizens and unfairly deflates wages. But it also has united an unlikely group of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum who want to help businesses in need of workers with specialized expertise. That contingent includes Republicans who have typically been reluctant to support legislation that would allow more immigrants into the country.

The recent presidential proclamation forcing employers to pay $100,000 to hire workers under H-1B visas — a move designed to incentivize domestic hiring practices — is instilling fear and confusion inside hospitals and universities that rely on the program. It also has sent a jolt through the Senate, where the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee recently reintroduced legislation designed to strengthen the rules for the program and prioritize applicants with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

“We need an immigration bill, badly,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a cosponsor of the bill who is working to get fellow conservatives on board with the effort. He’s also running for governor of a state with multiple major research universities.

“I think Trump, perhaps inadvertently, is strengthening our case for the bill,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), another co-sponsor of the legislation.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, are skeptical there is sufficient political will to make any meaningful progress on the issue. Immigration hard-liners still occupy senior positions throughout the White House and hold power on Capitol Hill; Trump has waffled on the question of whether the H-1B policy is worth preserving; and at least one key Democrat says any conservative enthusiasm now to tackle the program is too little, too late.

“There’s no appetite for immigration legislation at all,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is set to retire in 2027 with little to show for his work over nearly three decades in office to pass legislation that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

The American economy relies heavily on H-1B visas, with the number of people applying for slots vastly outnumbering those which are available each year. And this is not the first time lawmakers have seen a glimmer of hope around efforts to overhaul the program — only to later see it fade.

Almost a year ago, the billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk was touting high-skilled immigration throughout the United States through H-1B visas, saying they were necessary to help fuel innovation. Trump, who suspended the program during his first term, suddenly appeared ready to side with Musk, lauding the initiative that he claimed to have leveraged for his own business interests.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a MAGA stalwart and Musk acolyte, also signaled an openness to revisiting the H-1B system from his perch as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

But Musk has since that time had a public falling-out with the president, and anti-immigration hawks like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have Trump’s ear. Trump’s new H-1B visa fee is a reflection of the administration’s current stance.

“Anything that’s going to get done, the president’s got to sign off on it,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), “So it’s going to be something that the president feels comfortable with.”

Scott worked on a previous effort to limit the number of H-1B recipients who can receive green cards annually. Different versions of that bill passed the House and the Senate in 2019 and 2020, respectively, but the two measures were never reconciled, and the legislation was never signed into law.

Wishing to seize the moment but also cognizant of the political challenges ahead, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in an interview shifted his comments to deliver a personal plea to Trump himself.

“The president has brought attention to the problems with H-1B’s,” the Iowa Republican said. “If the president will read your story, I’d give him this message: He’s created great credibility because he has closed down the border — great credibility on immigration issues.”

Endorsing an H-1B overhaul bill, Grassley continued, “would give him a chance to get some of these really simple things in immigration that ought to pass the Congress.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its intentions to work with Congress on a legislative fix.

George Fishman, a senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former Department of Homeland Security official in the first Trump administration, said Trump is being pulled in radically different directions by those advising him. Barring true interest from Trump in the matter, Fishman suspected congressional action is unlikely.

“Based on three decades of bitter experience, I’m sort of resigned to not expecting things to happen legislatively,” said Fishman, who also worked on immigration policy as a Hill aide.

Trump aside, the political dynamics around the immigration issue on Capitol Hill are broadly problematic. For years, efforts to update the nation’s outdated immigration policy have fallen short. A bipartisan Senate “gang” in 2013 managed to pass a bill that combined border security with a pathway to citizenship, but it was never taken up in the House.

Since that time, the Trump ethos around immigration has further polarized the issue, hardening even Republicans who at one point linked their personal brands to being willing to work with Democrats on it.

That includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was once Durbin’s main partner in trying to pass legislation that would protect young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents as children — the recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Graham now says he isn’t interested in doing anything to expand legal immigration until the border is properly secured — and he doesn’t trust Democrats to restrain themselves.

“We all are agreed that we need H-1B reform,” Graham said in an interview. “Well, then Democrats will say, ‘Okay, let’s reform that, but what about the DACA folks?’ And they’ll want something there, and that’s just the way it goes.”

Grassley said he understood that reality. “We got some people on the right that think they aren’t going to vote for any [immigration] legislation until you load up 12 million people and get them out of the country.”

In the meantime, Trump’s new $100,000 fee is being challenged in court by a coalition of unions, education groups and others who argue the cost is unworkable and unjustified. A judge could strike down the proclamation, and the case is ongoing.

Until then, Grassley suggested the chaos and anxiety being caused by the presidential action could work to the advantage of the program’s proponents.

“The business groups that fought the Grassley-Durbin bill over the last 10 years, that are now upset with the $100,000 the president’s putting in on each one of these [visas] … maybe they would realize that they shouldn’t have fought our legislation,” he said.