Congress
The Obamacare subsidy fight is already splitting congressional Republicans
Republicans might be united on the public stage as they face off with Democrats ahead of a government shutdown. But a much more divisive internal fight waits in the wings.
The year-end expiration of health insurance subsidies first created under the Affordable Care Act is already splitting the GOP, seeming to vindicate Democrats’ decision to predicate their shutdown messaging on extending the tax credits.
Republican leaders have been trying to punt the issue as they work to force Democratic senators to swallow a seven-week stopgap measure ahead of the midnight deadline, insisting they will not broach the subject while agencies are closed.
But top Democrats said they heard a different message Monday in their Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, leaving the sitdown convinced he’s willing to negotiate on the expiring tax credits in the weeks ahead.
That is already raising alarms among conservative Republicans, who despise the 2010 Democratic health care law known as Obamacare and who would be more than happy to see a 2021 enhancement of the premium tax credits sunset cold turkey on Dec. 31.
“The right proposal is to let them expire,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Tuesday. “It’s been a complete fraud. People don’t even know they have these policies. So the right thing is to let them expire.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a leader of the hard-right House GOP faction, urged party leaders not to cut an “11th hour” deal on “Covid-era inflationary subsidies” in an X post Sunday.
“We’ve never voted for them. We shouldn’t now,” he said. “Do. Not. Blink.”
But Trump — who has veered the GOP away from anti-entitlement rhetoric on programs like Social Security and Medicaid — has not publicly ruled out an extension of the expanded tax credits, which benefit about 20 million Americans. Instead, in recent days, he has kept his public comments focused on purported Democratic efforts to benefit undocumented immigrants, who are already barred from receiving the subsidies.
Trump administration officials, including some involved in Monday’s White House meeting and in separate conversations with the president, confirm he is willing to talk about a possible extension with Democrats. Addressing reporters after the meeting, Vice President JD Vance said the two parties should “work on it together,” while echoing congressional Republicans in adding that talks would have to take place in the “context of an open government.”
There are self-interested reasons for Trump and Vance to want a solution: A spike in health insurance premiums for millions of Americans could be politically perilous less than a year before the midterm elections. A prominent Trump pollster, Tony Fabrizio, warned in July that allowing the subsidies to lapse “could hand the GOP majority to Democrats.”
More than a dozen moderate House Republicans want at least a one-year extension of the subsidies, while a group of GOP senators are working on a proposal that would continue them but also impose some new restrictions. Many are relieved that Trump appears to be finally entering the fray before open enrollment starts Nov. 1 and insurers start to lock in pricing for 2026.
Yet the deep internal GOP divisions have led Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to privately argue, including to Trump’s team, that any talks around a possible extension will take months on Capitol Hill. In addition to major questions about the costs of an extension, a politically toxic fight over abortion coverage also threatens to bog the GOP down.
Publicly, Johnson and Thune are pushing to keep the health care discussions entirely distinct from the shutdown conversations, even as Democrats lean on the subsidies as a messaging wedge in the throes of the funding fight.
Johnson called Democrats’ ACA extension demands a “red herring” Tuesday as the shutdown drama unfolded.
“We’re happy to sit down with them and talk about the concerns they have, the issues they have with, for example, the premium tax credits,” he said. “But we can’t do that in context of a hostage situation.”
But with word of Trump’s willingness to deal now emerging, some House Republicans are broaching their own possible support for those talks — knowing that Trump will have to be intimately involved in any bipartisan deal, and give cover for its passage through the Republican-controlled Congress.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), a fiscal hawk who spoke out against an extension of the subsidies as recently as last week, said it’s hard to weigh in on “hypotheticals.” But he said, generally, he would trust Trump.
“I trust that if he engages that there will be something in the deal that’s worthwhile for Republicans or, you know, he wouldn’t do it,” he said.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he agreed with Vance that no discussions should take place amid a shutdown. But he said Trump would be wise to open up negotiations with Democrats about a phase-out of the boosted tax credits.
“I don’t want to punish the American people because their program failed,” Griffith said. “We got to come up with something different. But in the meantime, let’s figure out a glide path.”
Mia McCarthy and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Congress
DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote
The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.
The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.
The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”
House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.
“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”
Congress
Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.
In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.
“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.
Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.
Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.
His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.
Congress
‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal
House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.
Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.
But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.
“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”
The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.
President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.
Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.
“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”
Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.
“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.
Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.
He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.
But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.
The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.
The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”
Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”
A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.
The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.
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