Congress

House members release bipartisan ‘principles’ for extending Obamacare subsidies

Published

5 months ago

November 3, 2025

A bipartisan quartet of House lawmakers released a “statement of principles” Monday for a potential compromise on an extension of Obamacare subsidies, which would include a two-year sunset and an income cap for eligibility.

The compromise framework from Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, and Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, is the first public tangible offering on health care policy since the government shutdown began 33 days ago.

Democrats are continuing to insist that any deal to end the shutdown involve an agreement around extending expanded tax credits for Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. But GOP leaders and President Donald Trump have refused to negotiate on health care until after the government is reopened.

The new blueprint is a sign the partisan freeze is thawing among some factions on Capitol Hill — and that frustration over the impasse is growing. Moderate Republicans in the House are especially losing patience, eager to address the health care issue while Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the chamber out of session since September.

“Congress is gridlocked, and too many Americans have lost faith that we can work together,” Bacon, Hurd, Suozzi and Gottheimer said in a statement. “Our hope is that this shared statement of principles will inspire bipartisan collaboration across Washington and help get Congress back to work for the American people.”

Bacon, in an interview Monday, said he hopes that senators — especially appropriators working on bipartisan talks around full-year government funding bills — will use this plan as fodder to negotiate an ACA extension framework.”I’m all for breaking the logjam,” Bacon said. “A lot of Republicans don’t want to see these premiums go up either.”

The four lawmakers are endorsing a two-year extension of the enhanced tax credits and an income limit on who can qualify for them, which would range from $200,000 to $400,000.

In a bid to appease conservatives who believe that the credits are wasteful and rife with fraud, the bipartisan coalition calls for both parties to identify ways to crack down on agents and brokers who engage in fraudulent practices when enrolling people in Obamacare health plans.

The lawmakers also want to ensure that enrollees are notified of the value of the premium tax credits and that ACA marketplaces track down “ghost beneficiaries” who may be improperly enrolled in the plans.

Bacon has hammered Democrats for not supporting the House-passed stopgap spending measure but said Monday the minority party needs an off-ramp over their ACA demands amid the shutdown, and his proposal with Hurd, Suozzi and Gottheimer could offer that path. He added that such a plan would likely need to be attached to the long-term government funding bills members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee are continuing to work through along the sidelines of shutdown talks.

But it’s unlikely the proposal would go far enough for hard-liners who want deeper reforms as part of any ACA extension — not to mention those who are opposed to any subsidy extension at all. The compromise plan is silent on whether it would restrict the ACA plans from covering procedures that would end pregnancies — a major demand of the anti-abortion lobby.

And while all four lawmakers are part of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, the plan failed to receive the official support of that full caucus, according to two people granted anonymity to share private deliberations. Members of the group had been discussing pieces of the reforms — including a $200,000 income cap for the full subsidies — for several weeks, as Blue Light News has reported.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, the GOP co-chair for the group, said in an interview in late-September he wanted an ACA deal before open enrollment started last Saturday, a deadline that came and went without Democratic and Republican leaders even talking about the topic. In some states, enrollees are now seeing theirout-of-pocket premiums for 2026 skyrocket by more than 100 percent.

Notably, however, Fitzpatrick didn’t sign onto the plan released Monday, whereas the Democratic co-chair, Suozzi, forged ahead with Bacon, Hurd and Gottheimer. Fitzpatrick has yet to fully review the plan, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Senate Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, have also been quietly workshopping their own ideas for a compromise on the subsidies, but have yet to indicate they are close to anything that could be made public.

Other vulnerable House Republicans, like Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, is a co-sponsor with Suozzi and others on legislation they introduced prior to the start of the shutdown that would extend the subsidies for one year.

Congress

Democrats send new DHS funding offer

Published

22 minutes ago

March 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats have submitted their latest proposal for pairing Department of Homeland Security funding with immigration enforcement policy changes.

“Democrats sent Republicans our counteroffer on legislation to reopen DHS, pay TSA workers, while at the same time rein in ICE with commonsense guardrails,” Schumer said, adding that the offer “contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about now for months” on changes to immigration enforcement tactics.

Schumer met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Wednesday to discuss the funding stalemate.

Congress

Trump demands ‘clean 18-month extension’ of key spy powers

Published

22 minutes ago

March 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump called on Congress Wednesday to quickly extend a key surveillance program amid a Republican rebellion that is threatening to tank the effort ahead of an April 20 deadline.

“When used properly, [the program] is an effective tool to keep Americans safe,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Wednesday. “For these reasons, I have called for a clean 18-month extension.”

He emphasized that restrictions included in the last reauthorization of the Section 702 spy program should remain in place. Trump also argued that the ongoing war against Iran should lead Congress to act quickly given the program, which allows intelligence agencies to monitor communications abroad without a warrant, is “extremely important to our Military.”

“With the ongoing successful Military activities against the Terrorist Iranian Regime, it is more important than ever that we remain vigilant, PROTECT our Homeland, Troops, and Diplomats stationed abroad, and maintain our ability to quickly stop bad actors seeking to cause harm to our People and our Country,” Trump said.

Blue Light News previously reported that the White House had privately communicated Trump’s support for a straight extension to key congressional leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson pushed House Republican hard-liners who want new restrictions against domestic surveillance to back the extension Trump wants, including in a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday morning. Several Republicans still raised concerns about the “clean” reauthorization plan, including Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia.

Congress

Biden-era DOJ memo: Trump hoarded classified documents relevant his businesses

Published

2 hours ago

March 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump maintained government documents relevant to his business interests after he left office, according to an internal memo from former special counsel Jack Smith’s office.

The memo, viewed by Blue Light News, was transmitted by the Justice Department to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees earlier this month. It was turned over in response to Republican-led probes into the investigations Smith led during the Biden administration surrounding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, as well as his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

“Process is very much ongoing but the FBI has already since found both — that classified documents were commingled with documents created after Trump left office and that there are classified documents that would be pertinent to certain business interests,” stated the memo, dated Jan. 13, 2023.

The second volume of Smith’s report on his team’s investigative findings, which centers around the classified documents case, is currently under a court-ordered seal. Democrats have been pushing for DOJ to release it in hopes that it could reveal damaging information about the president. New information about Trump’s conduct, unearthed in this memo, could only heighten the pressure on the administration to make the full report public.

It also could inform questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is due to invite Smith to testify in a public hearing on his Trump investigations in the coming months.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, alleged in a new letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi dated Tuesday that the memo suggests Trump “may have sold out our national security to enrich himself.”

Raskin also alleged that the DOJ appeared to have violated the judicial order compelling the seal of the second volume of Smith’s report in handing over some materials to Congress, including grand jury material.

A Justice Department spokesperson, in a statement Wednesday, rejected Raskin’s claims and called his move a “political stunt.”

The spokesperson said that it was unsurprising that Smith’s “files contain salacious and untrue claims about President Trump,” and the files handed over to Congress did not violate the court order, nor did they disclose relevant grand jury material.

“We understand that Jamie Raskin, much like Jack Smith, is blinded by hatred of President Trump,” the spokesperson wrote. “However, he needs to get his facts straight — this Department of Justice is the most transparent in history in part because of our efforts to expose the weaponization of the Biden administration in full compliance with the law and the court.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, also in a statement maintained that Trump “did nothing wrong” and called Raskin’s actions “pathetic.”

A spokesperson for House Judiciary Democrats pointed to the irony in the Trump administration claiming to be “the most transparent in history” when it was refusing to release Smith’s findings.

“Another day, another manufactured outrage from the left,” a spokesperson for House Judiciary Republicans countered.

The 2023 memo transmitted to Congress also stated that Trump maintained documents that were so sensitive that only few had access to them beyond the president, and the fact that he had materials relevant to his business interests suggested “a motive for retaining them.”

“These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them,” Raskin wrote in his letter to Bondi. “It is time for you to stop the cover-up and allow the American people to know what secrets he betrayed and how he may have cashed in on them.”

Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.