Congress

Congress waits on Trump as December health sprint begins

Published

7 months ago

December 1, 2025

Congress returns to session Monday and kicks off a December sprint to address expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and prevent health insurance premium hikes for millions of Americans.

Members of both parties acknowledge success hangs on one question: Will President Donald Trump ever figure out what he wants?

Since lawmakers left town 10 days ago, the picture has only grown foggier. Early in their holiday break, Trump appeared to be on the precipice of announcing a framework to temporarily extend the Obamacare subsidies with new eligibility restrictions, only to pull back after a mountain of internal GOP criticism.

In his only comments on the matter, Trump injected more uncertainty last week, saying he doesn’t want to extend the subsidies but understands it might be necessary.

The mixed signals have left the various factions on Capitol Hill trying to figure out where Trump will ultimately come down — and how to entice the president to back their side in a thorny policy fight that could have major political consequences in next year’s midterm elections.

“The president has got to sign whatever we do, otherwise it’s a legislative exercise,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who is drafting what he describes as a bipartisan proposal that would largely align with the leaked White House framework.

But Fitzpatrick and other lawmakers are quickly running out of time to pin Trump down. The Senate will vote next week, as soon as Dec. 9, on a health care proposal. It’s unclear what will be in the bill, but it’s the fulfillment of a promise Majority Leader John Thune made to Democrats as part of a deal to end the 43-day government shutdown.

“The question is, how quickly can something come together?” Thune said before leaving Washington for Thanksgiving.

Or as Fitzpatrick put it, “Time is not our friend.”

Fitzpatrick and other centrists are looking to build bipartisan support for an extension of the subsidies, a priority for Democrats, with new income restrictions and other safeguards, which are a priority for Republicans. Their efforts have loose backing from the Republican Main Street Caucus, whose chair, Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska, quickly endorsed the contours of the leaked White House framework last week.

But others in the GOP want to pursue a more radical overhaul of Obamacare, with Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rick Scott of Florida pitching the president on plans centered around individual spending accounts. Scott even termed his vision as “Trump Health Freedom Accounts.”

Trump has kept Congress in limbo as lawmakers try to figure out what he will support. Republicans spent much of November thinking the president was turning away from extending the tax credits, only to be blindsided by news that the White House framework would do just that.

Most House and Senate Republicans, including senior members of leadership, learned details of the tentative White House proposal — and how quickly it could be rolled out — from media reports, including POLITICO’s. Their objections prompted the White House to scuttle the rollout.

A House Republican granted anonymity to discuss internal conference thinking acknowledged that it would have been “wiser” if the Trump administration had consulted directly with Hill GOP leaders before word of the framework leaked out.

The GOP lawmaker added that Trump “cannot please everyone” with any health plan.

“Most took it as a good sign that the [White House] initially accepted a modified extension,” the lawmaker said. “Yes, a subset complained but I think they’re in the minority.”

Getting an extension of the subsidies through the House and Senate, not to mention Trump, will require navigating a political obstacle course.

For one, the framework was silent on new abortion restrictions, which are a key demand for many Republicans and a deal-break for many Democrats.

“We’re not going to allow public funds to be used for funding abortion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters before Thanksgiving.

While much of the GOP backlash to Trump’s unreleased framework was about how lawmakers found out about it, there’s a significant swath of Republicans who will simply never vote to extend anything related to Obamacare, according to three GOP aides granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

In addition to the Scott and Cassidy plans, a coalition of House and Senate Republicans that includes key committee chairs are working behind the scenes on a range of possible health care proposals, but there’s no guarantee the GOP will fall in line behind the plans or whether the lawmakers will even produce a bill this year.

As a fail-safe, House GOP centrists are preparing to launch a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a subsidy extension. But they are also trying to give space to the Senate to see if a bipartisan deal can be reached, according to two Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the talks.

Some lawmakers are already looking at Jan. 30, the next government funding deadline, as the real cutoff for a health care deal, even though the credits would have expired by then. And some hard-liners want GOP leaders to embrace a party-line approach amid widespread skepticism among their colleagues that’s even doable.

Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), whose committee shares oversight of the ACA, said he is “working to try to find a pathway to get some bipartisan solution” — not a partisan, filibuster-skirting bill Republicans could pursue under the budget reconciliation process.

“There are a lot of things going on,” he said. Crapo added that even if the promised Senate vote fails, “We will need to be continuing to work … with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to try to find some broader health care solutions.”

Democrats were initially buoyed by news that Trump was preparing to endorse an extension of the subsidies, despite the eligibility restrictions, believing that it was a good sign that he was even thinking about it. But that optimism faded after witnessing the Republican backlash.

They have their own internal divisions over what their own strategy should be as the clock ticks. Senate Democrats, as part of the agreement with Thune, will get to decide what proposal they vote on. But they haven’t yet come to consensus and are expected to use a Tuesday caucus lunch to discuss their options.

A group of Democrats, including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, has been in close contact with Republican lawmakers including Fitzpatrick and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about what could get bipartisan support. But others, such as independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, want Democrats to instead embrace a sweeping health care plan that would have no chance of winning GOP votes but would give them a rallying point heading into the midterm elections.

That divide has haunted congressional Democrats since January as they’ve repeatedly struggled to unify at key moments. There’s also widespread skepticism that Republicans will ever agree to any health care plan that isn’t fully endorsed by Trump.

“That’s the trouble today: You can have good-faith negotiations with Republicans, but it just doesn’t matter until Donald Trump weighs in,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “The pollsters have obviously told them that they are going to get their clocks cleaned if they don’t fix the health care mess they created. They may hate the ACA and Barack Obama so much they are willing to lose an election.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Congress

The messy standoff driving a wedge between a bipartisan Senate duo

Published

31 minutes ago

June 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have long prided themselves on working together to advance government funding bills. That collegiality is now showing signs of decay.

The Maine Republican and Washington Democrat have been openly feuding about the path forward on spending measures this summer. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.

Democrats attribute the clash to Collins’ pursuit of President Donald Trump’s demands for a record military budget that eclipses domestic spending, as she fights to retain her Senate seat in November. Republicans say Murray is playing midterm politics by trying to prevent Collins from landing a deal before Election Day, when Democrats hope to regain House and Senate majorities — and the upper hand in year-end funding talks.

“It’s not personal, but it is very frustrating,” Collins said last week, while insisting she and Murray are still on good terms.

All Murray would say about the state of their relationship was, “We’re talking.”

While that impasse doesn’t necessarily heighten the odds of a government shutdown this fall, it could delay any meaningful Senate appropriations action until after the elections. The outcome of congressional races — including Collins’ toss-up contest against Democrat Graham Platner — could change the power balance in government funding negotiations.

“It certainly looks to me like the Democrats don’t want to give Susan Collins a victory,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview. “I really think it’s intensely political. She is a very reasonable legislator. If you can’t make a deal with Susan Collins, you don’t want to make a deal.”

Part of Collins’ campaign-trail pitch to Mainers is that she gets results in Washington, and her inability to advance the dozen annual appropriations bills through her committee undercuts that narrative.

Collins isn’t refuting the idea that Democrats might want to deprive her of legislative success as she competes against Platner in one of the closest and most-watched races in the country.

“That’s certainly a viable theory, which is pretty pathetic,” she said in an interview.

This month Collins publicly accused Murray of sending government funding offers that have “made it clear that Democrats are abandoning the appropriations process.” Murray, meanwhile, suggested Collins was at fault for the stalemate by divulging she hadn’t responded to Murray’s latest offer in more than two weeks.

It’s a major tone shift for the two lawmakers, who have earned a reputation for trying to stay out of the partisan fray since they became their party’s top leaders on the Appropriations Committee in 2023. They’ve consistently resisted broadcasting behind-the-scenes friction during tough negotiations and succeeded in reaching cross-party compromises to advance funding bills each year — even after the record government shutdown last fall.

But they’re now at loggerheads over funding totals for the military and domestic programs, along with votes on hot-button Trump policies. Senate Republicans are seeking a military funding boost more than four times larger than any increase in domestic spending, as Trump calls for a record $1.5 trillion defense budget.

“We do not have an agreement,” Murray said, because Republicans “are set on increasing defense in an increasingly huge way that we’ve never had to deal with before.”

GOP senators also want to avoid any amendment votes that could sink approval of appropriations bills, including some related to the Justice Department’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” administration officials have promised not to pursue.

The result is that Collins has yet to hold a committee markup on a single government funding bill with just three months left before federal dollars expire. And some Republican appropriators acknowledge it’s possible the panel won’t vote on any of the spending measures this year given the deadlock.

“Obviously Susan is up this year. And Democrats, at every level and every opportunity, are playing politics with it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview. “The appropriations process used to be fairly bipartisan. … Murray and the Democrats have turned it into a partisan game.”

Some Democrats openly sympathize with Collins’ predicament in trying to represent politically moderate Maine while holding one of the most influential positions on Capitol Hill during Trump’s second term and unified Republican control of Congress.

“The chair of the committee is being squeezed in every direction,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview.

Many Senate Republicans don’t “give a damn” about funding domestic efforts like public education and biomedical research, Baldwin continued. “I believe that the chairwoman does care about those issues. But you know, she’s in an unenviable position.”

Since Trump was reelected, Collins has worked to negotiate funding bills that spend far more on domestic programs than the president sought. The result has been essentially flat funding for nondefense programs and a 17 percent increase in military spending, which includes the billions of dollars Republicans enacted along party lines last year.

“Chair Collins is very devoted to, or interested in, following through to help the president get more money for the Department of War and munitions, et cetera,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a top Republican appropriator. “And I think Senator Murray is on the opposite page.”

“Rather than legislate and work these things out,” Capito added, “I think it’s been decided on the other side to just be obstinate and not participate and not negotiate.”

Trump is calling this year for boosting Pentagon spending by more than 40 percent while slashing domestic programs by 10 percent. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a senior Democratic appropriator who has served in Congress for more than 40 years, calls it “a massive change” in the way government funding has been divvied up for decades — by negotiating matching dollar-for-dollar increases in both military and nondefense funding.

“We’re so far apart. We haven’t faced anything like that in recent memory,” Durbin said in an interview. “And to accept the premise of it — what’s left for nondefense is terrible.”

Collins could proceed with markups this summer without an agreement with Democrats, as the House Republican majority has done for years. But Republican senators would need to be willing to vote on controversial amendments Democrats might offer — including proposals that defy Trump.

Senate Republican appropriators faced that issue last summer, when the panel unexpectedly adopted an amendment barring the Trump administration from repurposing cash intended for relocating the FBI headquarters. That outcome prompted several GOP senators to withdraw support for the funding bill.

“The challenge is that, if you have every Democrat voting against reporting the bill out — and then they also are offering poison pills — it’s hard to move those bills,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FBI, said in an interview.

During the two years Murray chaired the full committee, Moran recalled, “We had members who wanted to offer what would probably be considered poison pills by Democrats. And Senator Collins talked Republicans out of doing so, to move the process.”

The two sides could easily reach an agreement on amendments and policy stipulations, some Democrats contend, if only Collins and Murray could bridge the divide between the president’s military funding demands and their own domestic priorities.

“Senator Collins is carrying out the administration’s wishes,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, another senior Democratic appropriator, said in an interview. “And Senator Murray is noting that a reckless increase in defense spending is not in the best interest of Americans.”

“So they’re both advocating for their viewpoint,” Merkley added. “That’s what we do in a democracy.”

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

Congress

Johnson-backed plan to combine Pentagon and election bills advances to floor

Published

7 hours ago

June 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.

The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.

That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.

However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.

Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.

The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.

“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”

The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.

The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.

The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Congress

Pentagon and elections bills could be combined in bid to unfreeze House floor

Published

10 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he plans to deploy an unusual procedural maneuver in a bid to unfreeze the House floor this week, seeking to send the annual Pentagon policy bill and the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act to the Senate in a single package.

That is likely a recipe for a continued standoff between the two chambers over the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP divides. Under Johnson’s plan, the annual defense policy bill, which typically passes every year with large bipartisan majorities, could become a collateral victim of the impasse.

Asked in brief interview if he had talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune about his plans, Johnson replied, “I have to do my job in the House, and they’ve got to do their job in the Senate, so we’ll see what happens.”

Johnson is seeking to placate House conservative hard-liners, led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who have threatened to oppose the procedural measures that give Republicans control of the floor unless they agree to tougher tactics meant to force the Senate into passing the elections bill.

House GOP leaders discussed the plan to merge the two bills over the weekend as Luna pushed to amend the defense bill directly.

She did not say in an interview Monday whether Johnson’s gambit would suffice: “We want it baked together, not able to be stripped out,” she said.

But the Senate is free to work its own will, and members of that chamber are likely to reject any defense bill that has the partisan elections bill attached. That would set the stage for GOP leaders to strip it out when the House and Senate hash out the differences between their competing Pentagon bills later this year.

Johnson, meanwhile, is pushing a separate plan to pass a slimmed-down version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process — an option hard-liners have all but rejected.

“I don’t think that that can be done,” Luna told reporters Monday.

He’s also facing another complication: The version of the SAVE America Act he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon bill doesn’t include the latest demands for the bill from President Donald Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.