Congress

Republicans again find themselves in an Obamacare pickle

Published

12 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

Lummis blocks resolution denouncing Trump’s ‘public service announcements’

Published

2 minutes ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A Republican senator blocked a resolution Tuesday that would have denounced President Donald Trump’s recent campaign-style ads funded with taxpayer dollars.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming objected to Sen. Maggie Hassan’s nonbinding resolution, which said it was the sense of the Senate that the ads “should not be paid for by the United States government.” Because Hassan (D-N.H.) was trying to pass the resolution without a formal vote, any one senator could block it.

“It just tells the president that he is wrong — that these ads need to be pulled down and that they should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Hassan said on the floor.

Lummis however countered that Hassan’s concerns about the ads say “more about her side of the aisle” and compared Trump’s ads to President Bill Clinton’s antidrug campaign, among others. One of the ads Trump is running at taxpayer expense is virtually identical to a 2024 campaign ad.

“When a Democratic president tells Americans what to do, it’s a public service,” Lummis said. “When this president tells Americans that liberty is worth defending, it’s a problem.”

Congress

Republicans wanted Jack Smith to give them a smoking gun. They got a gaffe instead.

Published

47 minutes ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

It started with a pledge to expose a Biden-era conspiracy to take down President Donald Trump. It ended with a botched attack over basketball tickets.

Armed with subpoena power in Congress and a friendly Justice Department on their side, Republican lawmakers have spent two years promising to expose former special counsel Jack Smith as the leader of an anti-Trump witch hunt that morphed into a full-blown attempt to take down the Republican establishment.

Smith’s appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee — his third time testifying under oath on Capitol Hill, the second time in public — was supposed to be a watershed moment for the GOP intent on extracting a smoking gun ahead of the midterm elections. Instead, the hearing was most memorable for the fusillade of insults hurled by the panel’s Republicans.

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri unsuccessfully sought to implicate Smith in a plot to attend a sporting event as a cover for investigating Trump election interference claims, then called him a “dirtbag.” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the former prosecutor made him “want to throw up in my mouth.” And Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, comparing him to “Javert from ‘Les Mis,’” said Smith’s probe was “the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.”

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley insisted the hearing was “not the end” of his investigative work, but the four-hour grilling had the feeling of finality. The Republican-led probe into Smith’s efforts to bring criminal charges against the president has already stretched for two years, and Democrats stand a chance of retaking control of Congress in the midterms.

And at least one Republican member of the panel, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, said he believed the investigation into Smith had run its course in Congress.

“At this point, I think we kind of know what we know,” Hawley said in an interview following the hearing. “I think at this point, it’s up to the DOJ to either prosecute him for perjury for lying under oath, which I think the House has formally referred him for … or try to have him disbarred.”

Judiciary Committee Republicans did little Tuesday to challenge the substance of Smith’s criminal case against Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Smith reinforced his contention that Trump mounted an unprecedented criminal assault on the transfer of power, seeking to derail Joe Biden’s victory and then capitalizing on the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol — unleashed by a mob of his supporters — to further that goal.

Smith also defended the work of his staff and decried the Trump-led Justice Department’s decision to fire them as “illegal.” And he made his most forceful case yet that the probe he led was actually fueled by Republican witnesses who broke from Trump over his handling of the 2020 election.

”It’s very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses, the people who were the difference between the rule of law and not, were Republicans,” Smith said.

When Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) ripped into Smith for secretly obtaining her late brother Lindsey Graham’s phone records as part of his inquiry, Smith hailed him as a “patriotic public servant” and who likely would have been a featured witness in Trump’s trial — because he eventually concluded Trump’s election fraud claims were false.

Smith similarly hailed Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and former Vice President Mike Pence as heroic figures who were crucial witnesses against the president. Smith ultimately dropped his case after Trump prevailed in the 2024 election. Though he said he remained confident in his ability to secure a conviction at trial, Smith emphasized that Justice Department policy forbids criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

When they weren’t lobbing personal attacks at Smith, Republicans homed in on what they described as procedural flaws of Smith’s investigation. They criticized him for subpoenaing phone records of members of Congress, like Lindsey Graham, who communicated with Trump and his administration during the post-2020 election timeframe.

They hit Smith for securing court orders that prevented telecom companies from alerting lawmakers to those subpoenas, and challenged his respect for the constitutional protections members of Congress are afforded to avoid scrutiny from federal prosecutors. That line of questioning produced one of the only bipartisan moments of the hearing: a pitch by Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) for legislation that would limit the ability of prosecutors to obtain secrecy orders when they issue subpoenas in sensitive probes.

Lee is poised to be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress if Republicans maintain control of the chamber.

Smith used his appearance, as well as friendly questions from the panel’s Democrats, to parry GOP criticism of his tactics. He followed all Justice Department policies and laws, he insisted, and said he had respect for the separation of powers — including Congress’ constitutional protection from executive branch scrutiny.

Smith said he never targeted GOP lawmakers but pursued critical evidence of Trump’s actions and state of mind that would have been necessary to prove his case in court, and he repeatedly returned to an overarching contention: that he had enough evidence to convict Trump of “one of the most serious crimes that’s ever happened in our nation’s history.”

He also reminded lawmakers what he couldn’t say: anything at all about his charges against Trump for hoarding classified information at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s findings in that probe remain sealed from public view by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has ordered the Justice Department to keep it secret.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said subpoenaing that report would be one of Democrats’ first actions should they have the majority in the next Congress.

Ultimately, Smith’s hearing Tuesday may end up being best remembered for a high-profile gaffe by Schmitt, who accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta at the very moment local prosecutor Fani Willis — who had also charged Trump over the 2020 election scheme — was facing damaging questions about her conduct. As proof, displayed on an elaborate poster, Schmitt offered text messages suggesting that Smith attended a basketball game on Feb. 3, 2024 — the same day the Atlanta Hawks played the Golden State Warriors.

Schmitt revelled as a clearly flummoxed Smith struggled to discern what Schmitt was talking about.

“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Schmitt said. “So I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself.”

After a few moments, Smith did recall having attended a basketball game — but not in Atlanta. It wasn’t the Hawks his colleagues were discussing in a series of texts, Smith explained, but the Hawkeyes, whose star Caitlin Clark was playing in Maryland that day.

“It was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play, and so we went to the game,” Smith said.

Immediately after the exchange, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) fact-checked Schmitt in real-time, confirming the date of the Iowa-Maryland game and suggested that her colleagues’ reliance on “false information based on confusion about the name of a team” warranted an apology.

“You don’t call someone a dirtbag when you haven’t done your own research and you don’t have your facts straight,” Klobuchar said after the hearing. “And it just shows how completely out of control this whole thing was.”

Schmitt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his allegations.

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Cruz blocks Senate Democrats’ bid to pass AI safety bill

Published

3 hours ago

September 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.

Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.

“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.

“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.

As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.

In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.

Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.