Congress

House GOP moderates signal they’ll fall in line with Johnson’s health plan

Published

2 months ago

December 16, 2025

It’s a time of choosing for a band of vulnerable House Republicans who have long warned about the expiration of key Obamacare subsidies.

Speaker Mike Johnson is barreling toward a Wednesday vote on a health care bill he and other Republican leaders are presenting as an alternative to the tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the month. They have no plans to allow a vote before then on extending the subsidies.

The early signs are that the group of GOP moderates who have voiced concern about their constituents’ health care costs — not to mention their own political futures — is preparing to fall in line this week.

“I haven’t seen anything objectionable yet,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said Monday. “For me to vote against it, I’d have to find something objectionable. I wouldn’t vote against it in protest.”

While he said it would be “a huge mistake” to not include an extension, Fitzpatrick said he votes “for or against legislation based on the merits of the bill.”

Others in the centrist Republican group said much the same privately — that they are still prepared to vote for the GOP health care bill even with their bid for an amendment vote extending the subsidies apparently doomed.

“We’re not going to cut off our nose to spite our face,” said one who, like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to comment on private discussions among the group.

If that sentiment holds, it would be the latest instance of how the group of moderates has largely followed Johnson’s lead in 2025 — voting in lockstep on the party’s domestic policy bill despite objections over Medicaid cuts, for instance, and keeping their names off discharge petitions meant to circumvent the speaker’s control of the House floor.

But the Obamacare lapse represents a particularly acute test for the group at a sensitive moment — after many of them have spoken out publicly.

Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican in a highly competitive Virginia district, warned of the political fallout for House Republicans in a closed-door House GOP conference meeting last week. Fitzpatrick and fellow GOP Reps. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler of New York and David Valadao of California have been involved in efforts to broker an extension of the subsidies, so far to no avail.

It was already virtually assured the enhanced tax credits enacted and extended by Democrats under former President Joe Biden would lapse on Jan. 1, given the Senate’s failure to act last week on a Democratic proposal for a three-year extension.

Forcing a House vote on the matter this week, however, could put additional pressure on Republican leaders to explore a solution next month that would maintain the subsidies in some form for the 20 million Americans who now use them.

But the GOP moderates, most of whom hail from purple districts and are at serious risk of losing their seats in the midterms, did not find any sympathetic ears among Johnson or his top leadership allies in the final weeks.

“They made their case,” one senior House Republican involved in the talks said of the centrists. Their last-minute push for a floor vote wouldn’t change party leaders’ belief that they didn’t have the votes to actually pass an extension of the subsidies, the senior Republican added — especially given divides within their conference over abortion coverage.

Johnson said in a recent interview he understood the “dilemma” facing some of the moderates who have since launched discharge petitions to try to force a vote on an extension. But privately Johnson’s leadership circle was always skeptical that those petitions would ever garner enough support to force the speaker’s hand.

One big problem for the centrists: They were too late.

By the time Fitzpatrick and Kiggans launched separate discharge petitions aimed at extending the subsidies, there were not enough legislative days left to trigger a vote before the House adjourns for the year and the tax credits lapse. Notably, the Republican moderates mostly kept quiet during the entire 43-day government shutdown — and didn’t publicly pressure Johnson and fellow GOP leaders to negotiate as Democrats made the expiring tax credits the centerpiece of the fight.

Fitzpatrick, a co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, vowed last week to keep pushing to extend the subsidies.

“They can just dig themselves into an ideological corner all day long — it’s not fixing the problem,” Fitzpatrick said about party leaders in an interview. “We can agree that the current construct is flawed, but that letting them expire is not acceptable.”

Late last week, he and other moderates pushed Johnson to allow a vote on a floor amendment to the GOP health care bill or another outlet that would allow skeptical members an opportunity to express support for extending the subsidies.

But hammering out that amendment has proven intractable, with Johnson indicating directly to the group that he was trying to make something work while others in the leadership ranks remained skeptical they could.

Fitzpatrick indicated Monday he plans to propose an amendment in the Rules Committee that would be modeled off his bipartisan bill that proposed a two-year subsidy extension with an income cap and other eligibility restrictions. But as of Monday there was no agreement to allow it to come to a vote, Majority Leader Steve Scalise said.

“I don’t think the final decision’s been made” on the amendment, he told reporters.

The group of moderates planned to huddle on the House floor Monday night to finalize their strategy for the Tuesday Rules meeting, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private plans.

Separately, Fitzpatrick will meet Wednesday with the Problem Solvers to discuss their next steps on health care, two other people said, and he’s invited a bipartisan group of rank-and-file senators who have also been exploring a bipartisan deal.

Valadao, a senior appropriator who heads the centrist-leaning Republican Governance Group caucus, was among dozens of Republicans who lost their seats in 2018 after Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare. He declined to say in an interview Monday how he would vote on the leadership-backed health bill.

“We’ll see how the amendment plays out,” he said.

Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who heads the House GOP campaign arm, said in an interview Monday he hasn’t given vulnerable members any advice about how they should be talking about the expiring Obamacare subsidies in their districts.

“What I’ve been saying to my colleagues is that we’ve all got to do a better job of talking about what we’re for,” Hudson said. “Because we have actual policies that would bring down premiums and make health care more affordable — we just need to be more vocal about it.”

Asked if he was worried about the expiring subsidies costing House Republicans the majority next year, he said, “No.”

“Premiums are high — we told them they would be high if Obamacare passed,” Hudson said.

Congress

Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’

Published

9 hours ago

February 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.

Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.

House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.

GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.

“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”

The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.

Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.

Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.

“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”

Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”

He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.

Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”

“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”

Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”

“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”

Congress

Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday

Published

23 hours ago

February 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.

House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.

That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.

But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.

Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.

He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.

Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.

Congress

Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown

Published

2 days ago

January 31, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.

House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.

The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.

This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.

Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.

Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.

That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.