Congress

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

Published

7 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

Capitol agenda: SAVE America swallows Washington

Published

3 hours ago

June 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Speaker Mike Johnson’s day will be consumed by the SAVE America Act — again.

President Donald Trump’s signature election security bill is on track to derail his chamber’s agenda for the rest of the week as a small group of hard-liners demand House GOP leaders somehow find a way to force the Senate to pass the measure.

Johnson Monday night tried to appease the group by leveraging an unusual procedural maneuver that would send the elections measure and the annual Pentagon policy bill to the Senate in a single package.

But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who has led the bloc halting House business, dismissed Johnson’s move, arguing it’d allow the Senate to easily strip out the SAVE America Act.

It “will not work,” Luna said Monday night after demanding “a full bakeage” into the must-pass defense bill earlier in the day.

To be clear: Her own proposal to simply add SAVE America as an amendment could be removed just as easily in the Senate as with Johnson’s plan.

But with the speaker needing a unified conference to unlock floor business for the rest of the week — he may be forced to deal with Luna and allied hard-liners regardless of legislative logic.

Meanwhile, a Supreme Court decision Monday only sharpened Trump and his allies’ fixation on the legislation, as the court ruled states may accept mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day so long as they are postmarked by that day.

“In light of the tremendous loss in the Supreme Court today concerning Voter’s Rights, and the fact that ‘people’s’ votes are allowed to be counted LONG AFTER an Election is over, it is more important than ever to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump said on Truth Social, reinvigorating hard-liners’ crusade despite his calls last week for them to stop threatening “No’s” on rule votes.

The court’s ruling spotlights another complication for Johnson: The version of the elections bill he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon legislation doesn’t include the latest demands from Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, for example, was noncommittal Monday when asked about supporting Trump’s full demands for the bill.

“The voter ID part I’m fine with,” he said in an interview. “I’ve already voted for that.”

Even if the House somehow overcomes a tight rule vote and subsequently passes the merged bills, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said the combo could not pass his chamber.

Senators are set to debate their own version of the defense bill next month, and it is all but certain the election overhaul would be removed in negotiations between the two chambers.

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON HUDDLES WITH TRUMP ON HOUSING BILL: Johnson said a landmark housing affordability package Congress cleared last week will become law, and that Republicans won’t have to take an uncomfortable vote to override a presidential veto to make that happen. Johnson in an interview Monday said he’d speak again with Trump Tuesday about signing the bipartisan housing bill. The president tanked plans last week to swiftly sign into law one of Republican lawmakers’ top priorities before the midterms, saying he’d hold the measure hostage until Congress passed his election security bill.

— RELATIONSHIP FRAYS BETWEEN SENATE’S TOP APPROPRIATORS: It’s getting harder and harder for the top Republican and Democrat overseeing government funding in the Senate to keep up the collegial working relationship they’ve long prided themselves on. Sens. Susan Collins and Patty Murray have been increasingly at odds as the midterms approach and spending priorities diverge. It comes after their successful collaboration on bipartisan legislation during Murray’s two-year reign as chair of Senate Appropriations, which continued when Collins took the gavel last year.

Meredith Lee Hill, Kelsey Brugger, Jennifer Scholtes and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Congress

The messy standoff driving a wedge between a bipartisan Senate duo

Published

6 hours 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

13 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.