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Capitol agenda: Congress leaves health mess for January

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Congress is about to leave town for the holidays — and put off their health care troubles until January.

The House and Senate will take their last votes of the year Thursday, officially allowing Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire Dec. 31. The House passed its GOP-led health care package Wednesday night, though the Senate has no plans to take it up.

Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to work “much more” on health care in the new year, after moderate Republicans joined a Democrat-led discharge petition for a clean three-year extension of the subsidies. Johnson said “it’s inevitable” that the discharge petition comes up after lawmakers return.

“We’ll deal with it in January,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday. “These things take a lot of twists and turns. Just this week, we’ve had a lot of twists and turns.”

The Democrats’ discharge petition is a shell bill, which means lawmakers could add Senate-passed language to it — though it’s not clear what could reach 60 votes in the Senate. GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said the plan for now is to send the clean three-year extension.

Meanwhile, moderate rank-and-file members in both chambers are trying to come up with a last-minute consensus plan that could pass the House and Senate. But nothing could come together until January, when Congress will have less than a month until the next funding cliff.

At the center of these health care talks is Fitzpatrick, who is working behind the scenes to get an ACA fix even after the subsidy expiration date.

“I think it’s a mistake,” Fitzpatrick told Blue Light News of allowing the credits to lapse. “I’m going to exhaust every single option I have to get this done.”

It’s unclear if they can pull it off. The lawmakers already failed to secure an extension before the expiration date — it’ll be much harder to revive them after.

In the meantime: Interest groups on both sides are diving furiously into the blame game over the subsidies lapse. It’s an early test of the messaging battle over health care — an issue that could define the 2026 midterms.

What else we’re watching:   

— Appropriations movement: Senate GOP leaders have won over all the Republicans who objected to moving a five-bill package of government funding measures this week. Now it’s Democrats’ turn to check for holds on their side for the “minibus,” which contains the Labor-HHS-Education, Defense, Transportation-HUD, Commerce-Justice-Science and Interior-Environment bills.

— Stock trading talks: Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) expect to meet with Johnson Thursday to discuss a ban on congressional stock trading. So far, their discharge petition is nowhere close to the 218 signees necessary to force a vote in the House.

— A fight over broadband money: Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) will introduce a bill Thursday that would give states access to an estimated $20 to $22 billion in broadband deployment funding — a proposal at odds with efforts from Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that would claw back the funding entirely.

Benjamin Guggenheim, Meredith Lee Hill, Nicholas Wu, Amanda Chu, Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this report misidentified Ted Cruz’s state affiliation.

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Congress

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

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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.”

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Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday

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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.

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

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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.

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