Congress

Republicans again find themselves in an Obamacare pickle

Published

9 months ago

October 17, 2025

The ongoing debate over soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies has reopened an old wound for Republicans: What should they do about the health care law they have railed against for more than a decade but has now taken root with their own constituents?

While some GOP hard-liners are again embracing repeal-and-replace rhetoric, the scars from the party’s failed attempt to undo the ACA in 2017 have left a broader swath of Republicans extremely wary of trying to rip out the law — even as they continue to criticize it.

Instead, as Democrats put the ACA at the center of the ongoing government shutdown fight, Republican leaders and key senators are acknowledging the political reality that Obamacare, at least for the immediate future, is here to stay. Republicans are, instead, eyeing a bipartisan end-of-year health care push that could pair a conservative overhaul of the expiring subsidies with modest proposals that would tweak — but not fully uproot — the 2010 law.

Speaker Mike Johnson is downplaying prospects for nixing the ACA ahead of the midterms, saying this week he still has “PTSD” from the GOP’s 2017 repeal-and-replace debacle.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune made clear in an interview his members are making plans for a bigger health policy push, including “reforms” to the subsidies, in the next government funding package and potentially elsewhere before the end of the year.

“There’s some very interesting potential health care discussions and even solutions out there, and obviously reforms that need to be made to the Obamacare enhanced subsidies,” Thune said, adding that a bipartisan agreement could move as part of a “broader package” or “independently” after the shutdown ends.

The expiring tax credits, expanded by Democrats in 2021, are driving the desire to act on health care this year — millions could go uninsured come the new year without legislative action, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, Republicans have been discussing a menu of other options in the health care policy arena, both among themselves and with White House officials.

Ideas include overhauling the operation of drug intermediaries, known as pharmacy benefit managers; granting Americans additional options around Health Savings Accounts; and allowing more flexible employer-provided health insurance plans.

“Our members have been working on plans to reduce premiums for families for months now,“ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in an interview, mentioning HSAs and “things that are focused on reducing premiums.” But, he added, Republicans haven’t yet worked out how to bring those proposals to the floor.

Another big question is how much buy-in from Democrats those proposals might have. Republicans appear unlikely at this point to pursue a party-line reconciliation bill that would include health care policies — at one point a possibility following the success of the tax and spending megabill passed over the summer — which means some bipartisan support will be necessary to get any legislation passed in the Senate.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo said in a brief interview that Senate Republicans have been discussing a year-end health care package, including on HSA flexibility, and “my hope is to have it be bipartisan.”

Asked about the possibility of linking that to a potential extension of the ACA tax credits, he said, “If we have a vehicle that’s moving, I see no reason not to add it.”

But Democrats are already seizing on the repeal talk in some corners of the GOP, with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington comparing it to the cataclysmic sinking of the Titanic.

“It is bad enough so many of them can see the iceberg coming and are saying, ‘Ah, we’ll worry about that after the ship goes down.’ But we’ve also got Republicans saying that you wish this ship had sunk earlier,” Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters. She was referring to the GOP’s refusal to extend the Obamacare subsidies before Nov. 1, at which point notices will go out alerting enrollees to massive premium hikes.

One favorite GOP proposal, known as a “CHOICE arrangement,” would allow employers to reimburse employees on a tax-free basis for health insurance premiums or medical expenses. It was one of several health policies that passed the House as part of the GOP megabill but didn’t get enacted in the final product.

House Republicans have indicated that there is appetite to revisit dropped policies such as this one, but a senior House Republican aide who works in health policy, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy hard-liners.

“I don’t see an extension of the Obamacare subsidies happening without a bunch of reforms alongside conservative health care policy wins, and CHOICE arrangements alone is not enough,” the aide said. “That’s not getting members to vote for Obamacare.”

Nothing under serious discussion has so far come close to what some GOP lawmakers are most eager to discuss as the year-end deadline for the tax credits barrels closer: a complete reversal of the ACA. And while appetite within the GOP leadership for gutting the ACA is minimal at this point, vocal opponents of the law could have an influence in a narrowly-divided House Republican majority.

Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) spoke up on a private House Republican call earlier this month in support of redoubling efforts to repeal Obamacare. And Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said during a teletown hall this week that Democrats’ calls for bipartisan negotiations around the fate of the subsidies are falling flat.

“Well, I’ve got a compromise for them: How about we repeal all of Obamacare?” he said, floating the prospect of a second reconciliation bill.

Conservative opponents of the tax credits say they are too costly and rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

Other Republicans are trying to urge their colleagues away from igniting a politically explosive debate just over a year out from the midterms, recalling the 2018 Democratic wave election that was attributable to backlash from the GOP repeal-and-replace efforts.

Even Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a longtime critic of the Democratic health law, stopped short when asked if he backed the call from some of his colleagues to nix Obamacare entirely.

“I just think we ought to focus on fixing it,” he said in a brief interview.

Johnson also warned this week that the ACA’s “roots are so deep” that many Republicans are wary of trying to “completely repeal and replace” it. The law now provides coverage for more than 20 million Americans and touches a significant segment of the economy.

“It was really sinister the way, in my view, the way it was created,” he said of the 2010 law. “I believe Obamacare was created to implode upon itself, to collapse upon itself.”

Republicans are now also mired in internal discussions about whether to extend the ACA credits, and what changes they could make to the subsidies to appeal to a broader set of conservatives. They have floated ideas such as instituting new income caps, minimum co-pays, a cutoff for new enrollees and abortion restrictions.

Republicans insist those talks won’t get underway until after the shutdown ends, though some of them also warn negotiations will totally unravel if too many ambitious GOP policy proposals get added to the mix.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who’s been tapped by the White House to work with Democrats on a shutdown offramp, said in an interview this week said the current imperative for government funding negotiations is to “keep it simple” with “some just very easy changes that both sides can agree to and then get in the weeds at a later date.”

“I’m afraid once we dive into health care,” Mullin added. “It’s going to take a while to unpack that.”

Congress

Senate Ethics dismisses allegations against Ruben Gallego

Published

4 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed allegations of misconduct levied against Sen. Ruben Gallego, who stood accused by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of “campaign finance violations and inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature.”

The charges came following the resignation of the Arizona Democrat’s longtime friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who was forced to step down amid accusations of serious sexual misconduct. Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to implicate Gallego by claiming in an interview on CBS that a woman would come forward about an “incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time and the event was sexual in nature allegedly.”

But in a letter to Gallego sent Monday — which he shared in a public news release — the notoriously inactive Ethics Committee cited Gallego’s “prompt contact with the Committee following media reports of the allegations and appreciated your full cooperation with the Committee throughout the investigation.”

Gallego has maintained he was unaware of the allegations against Swalwell and said in a statement he was a victim of “right-wing conspiracies peddled by far-right activists like Anna Paulina Luna, the White House, and their allies.”

He continued, “I look forward to an apology from Rep. Luna for weaponizing the ethics process while refusing to investigate historic corruption that’s making life harder for families.”

Luna, in a post on X, defended her referral to the Senate Ethics Committee.

“The good news about DC is everyone talks, and eventually the reporters come forward with your texts,” Luna wrote on social media. “Do yourself a favor and keep raising for your legal defense fund. Once a creep always a creep, and you’re gonna need it.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s state. She represents Florida.

Congress

Rubio, Witkoff to brief Congress on Iran

Published

7 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Top deputies of President Donald Trump will brief Congress on the Iran peace talks in a Monday conference call — the first time administration officials have addressed a broad group of lawmakers since Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Tehran earlier this month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, will lead the briefing for all House and Senate members at 4 p.m., according to seven people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Republicans and Democrats have called for more transparency about the 14-point agreement inked on June 18, which initiated a cease-fire between the two countries. Since then, the U.S. and Iran have continued to engage in hostilities.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Red, white and GOP hard-liner blues

Published

10 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans finally cleared a runway this week to finish some of their top legislative priorities before the July 4 recess.

That is, unless a small band of hard-liners trip up those plans at takeoff.

Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to move quickly to pass fiscal 2027 appropriations legislation, the annual defense policy bill and a kids online safety bill that has been years in the making. The movement comes after President Donald Trump instructed GOP hard-liners to stop holding up a procedural vote amid a protest from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and others that the Senate hadn’t passed Trump’s election security bill.

But Luna and other hard-liners are still threatening to tank the procedural vote that could delay the defense policy bill and other measures until they get concessions on the SAVE America Act, amid other demands.

Johnson, for example, had also promised hard-liners a vote before July 4 on a sweeping GOP immigration bill introduced in the prior Congress as H.R. 2, which is highly unlikely to happen.

Johnson for his part has said the House will “pass the SAVE America Act again” by folding parts of it into a third party-line reconciliation bill. But the slimmed-down version he’d need to pursue in order to meet strict Senate rules for the budget process is already being panned by hard-liners as insufficient.

That reconciliation bill is also already delayed. House Republicans aren’t on track to meet their goal of advancing its framework before the July 4 recess as members on the Budget panel balked over how to pay for the legislation in a closed-door meeting last week.

“Time is of the essence, given how many legislative days we have,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, who is sponsoring the kids online safety legislation, said in an interview last week. “If we lose a week, that would be important.”

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is grappling with their own heated internal divisions this week. Members are split over supporting the adoption of an amendment to a fiscal 2027 spending bill from Rep. Thomas Massie that would end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aid program by $3.3 billion.

Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro did not instruct her colleagues on how to vote during a rare Sunday evening caucus call, two sources granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting tell Mia and Riley. Leaders did, however, criticize the amendment as poorly written.

One other item this week that could split members of each party: House lawmakers are also slated to vote on a rewritten war powers resolution from Rep. Rashida Tlaib to reign in Trump administration military actions in Lebanon. Leadership worked with Tlaib to come up with new language last month that is expected to garner more Dem support, but the resolution is still expected to fail without GOP votes.

What else we’re watching:

— SENATE GOP GETS ANTSY ABOUT NOMINATIONS: Some Republican senators are unsettled by Trump’s apparent lack of urgency in filling vacant posts, even as GOP control of the chamber beyond the midterms is increasingly in doubt. There are more than two dozen federal court vacancies. Labor secretary, FDA commissioner and scores of other open positions do not have nominees, and a senior White House official said Trump is in no rush to fill them. “We’re running short on time,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of Senate HELP, which oversees health, labor and other issues.

—RICK SCOTT SAYS HE’S JUST TRYING TO HELP: Fresh off his controversial Trump invite to a Senate GOP lunch last week, Sen. Rick Scott told Blue Light News in an interview he’s trying to make a mark — not trying to challenge Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Scott insists that neither his invitation to the president nor a letter he circulated afterward outlining how the Senate GOP should be preparing for the midterms should be seen as a prelude to a leadership challenge. The Florida Republican said he’s perfectly happy running the conference’s conservative Steering Committee and predicted Thune would easily secure another term as leader. What has become eminently clear in recent weeks is that Scott — after a long career in business, two terms as governor and nearly eight years as senator — just isn’t a back-bench kind of guy.

Meredith Lee Hill, Riley Rogerson, Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.