Congress
Democrats coalesce around insurance subsidies as shutdown demand, Neal says
Top congressional Democrats have agreed on what they will demand of GOP leaders in return for voting to extend government funding this month: Any shutdown-averting deal needs to include health care provisions such as an extension of soon-to-expire insurance subsidies, one top lawmaker said.
Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the House’s top Democratic tax writer, described that ultimatum following a private huddle with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other party leaders.
“They’re on board” with the strategy, Neal said of Senate Democrats, including Schumer.
A Schumer spokesperson declined to address Neal’s specific claim. The Senate minority leader himself said Thursday after the meeting that Republicans need to come to the table for a “bipartisan negotiation” on health care or Democrats will not support a government funding bill.
“If they try to jam something down our throats without any compromise — without any bipartisan, real, bipartisan discussion — they ain’t going to get the votes, plain and simple,” Schumer said.
Neal argued that Congress can’t wait much longer to avert the expiration of enhanced tax subsidies that help about 20 million of Americans afford health care plans offered on exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. People who receive that assistance are already being notified that the tax subsidies will end later this year, he said, with open enrollment for health insurance beginning in November.
“So you can have this huge spike in health care costs coupled with the subtraction of health care for millions of Americans,” Neal said, referring to Medicaid cuts in the GOP domestic policy bill passed in July. “And we have broad agreement that the health of the American people should be paramount in this debate.”
Both Schumer and Jeffries have already moved to make health care — notably the enhanced insurance subsidies created by the 2021 American Rescue Plan — their key demand. But there have been internal disputes over whether to make it an immediate ultimatum ahead of the Sept. 30 expiration of government funding or kick a showdown later into the year to allow for additional spending negotiations.
While there are some Republicans who support extending the subsidies, top Republican leaders in both chambers have ruled out including any such extension on the immediate stopgap expected to get taken up this month to avoid a shutdown next month.
They are dealing with hardening opposition among fiscal conservatives to continuing the enhanced subsidies. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters Thursday that his group has met and decided “we oppose these free giveaways to insurance companies.” He accused Democrats of wanting to bankroll “multi-billion-dollar” health care corporations.
Hill Democrats, meanwhile, have taken pains to stay on the same page on government funding after House Democrats almost universally opposed a GOP-backed funding bill last March that some Democratic senators ultimately voted to advance.
As top leaders move into a more confrontational posture, appropriators are seeking to continue bipartisan negotiations on fiscal 2026 funding. The House agreed Wednesday night to kick off formal talks between Republicans and Democrats on a narrow funding package.
That conference committee will attempt to strike a deal on a full year of updated funding levels for three of the 12 bills Congress has to clear each year to keep federal cash flowing. The departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs would be funded in that three-bill batch, along with the FDA, congressional operations and military construction projects.
But Democrats are warning that Republicans will need to give considerable ground in those negotiations.
“House Republicans are coming to the table with funding bills that are filled with extreme, reckless cuts and harmful riders that have been rejected on a bipartisan basis,” Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator, said on the House floor.
Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. represents New Jersey’s most competitive district this November — but nobody, even his GOP colleagues, can say where he’s been for the past month.
A scion of one of the state’s most storied political dynasties, Kean’s team says the two-term congressmember is facing unspecified health issues. The New Jersey Republican hasn’t voted since March 5 and has missed almost 50 roll call votes.
The other two Republicans in the New Jersey delegation, Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, said they have called and texted Kean out of concern for his health. But so far, neither said they have heard from him. Van Drew said it’s been “radio silence.”
Several New York Republicans who have worked with Kean on key issues said similarly. Kean’s absence has largely fallen under the radar and GOP leaders haven’t addressed the issue to the conference, according to several Republicans.
One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said he didn’t even realize Kean had been missing until he tried to find him on the House floor Tuesday.
“I was looking for him,” Bacon said in an interview Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was that long.”
“I know the congressman and his family appreciate all of the well wishes and support,” Kean consultant Harrison Neely told Blue Light News. “Please know that he will be back on a regular full schedule very soon.”
Closer to home, Kean’s allies also expect him to come back soon.
“I don’t even know the truth myself or even enough to disclose any information,” Union County GOP Chair Carlos Santos told Blue Light News. “But I have been texting with him and was told he’ll be fine and make a full recovery in the next couple weeks.”
Kean represents New Jersey’s most competitive House seat — the 7th Congressional District, a large swath across the northern and central part of the state that includes Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. President Donald Trump narrowly carried it by one point in the 2024 presidential race, but Democratic former Rep. Mikie Sherrill carried the district by nearly two points in the 2025 governor’s race. Kean won the district by around five points in 2024.
Kean enters reelection in what could be his most challenging congressional bid to date. He faces an environment that is increasingly challenging for Republicans and the Trump administration is opening an immigration detention facility in his district while pulling funding for a major infrastructure project for New Jersey commuters — both of which have put him in a precarious position.
But Kean’s backers say his temporary absence will hardly be on voters’ minds come November.
“Everyone understands from their own family experiences that people run into unexpected health issues,” Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member and attorney to the Kean campaign, told Blue Light News. “Voters will be completely sympathetic and it’s so early in the year that it will be long forgotten come the fall.”
There is a competitive Democratic primary to take on Kean, with four prominent candidates.
Democrats in the New Jersey delegation have also noticed his absence and have started to be concerned for the congressmember’s health. Those members have also not heard anything.
“It’s been a long absence,” New Jersey Democrat Rep. Rob Menendez said. “I hope he’s doing all right. But I haven’t heard anything.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The Senate will kick off a marathon amendment voting session Wednesday night as Republicans aim to adopt a budget blueprint for immigration enforcement funding.
The chamber is expected to start the vote-a-rama free-for-all around 8 p.m., according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling. Senate Republicans need to adopt the budget resolution in order to subsequently pass their bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the party-line budget reconciliation process.
The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.
The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.
“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”
In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.
The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.
“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.
When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.
“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”
She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.
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