{"id":15394,"date":"2025-11-07T20:01:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T20:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-democrats-propose-1-year-obamacare-subsidies-punt-in-new-shutdown-offer\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T20:01:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T20:01:46","slug":"senate-democrats-propose-1-year-obamacare-subsidies-punt-in-new-shutdown-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-democrats-propose-1-year-obamacare-subsidies-punt-in-new-shutdown-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Democrats propose 1-year Obamacare subsidies punt in new shutdown offer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> laid out a new Democratic counterproposal for ending the government shutdown: attaching a one-year extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies to a spending stopgap that would reopen agencies.<\/p>\n

Schumer outlined the proposal during a floor speech Friday that was heavily attended by other Democratic senators in a show of caucus unity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to offer a simple proposal that would reopen the government and extend the ACA premium tax credits simultaneously,\u201d Schumer said.<\/p>\n

Schumer proposed a \u201cclean\u201d one-year extension to the tax credits that expire on Dec. 31 \u2014 meaning they would not include new restrictions on eligibility that many Republicans have sought. He also proposed creating a bipartisan committee to negotiate a longer-term solution for the subsidies and other health care reforms, to begin its work after the government reopens.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans have warned repeatedly that the government has to be reopened before Democrats get any vote on the ACA subsidies. But Democrats have balked so far at those terms as they pressure President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to cut a deal now to address the expected spike in Obamacare premiums.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with health care affordability and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cNow the ball is in the Republicans\u2019 court. We need Republicans to just say, \u2018Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumer\u2019s counteroffer came after Democrats met privately for hours Thursday to try to find a path forward that would unify the caucus.<\/p>\n

Shortly before Schumer\u2019s speech, a group of roughly a dozen members of the Senate Democratic Caucus \u2014 including the No. 2 leader, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois \u2014 met in a Capitol basement office. The group included senators who have been negotiating with Republicans about a path out of the shutdown, as well as other Democratic senators viewed as potential swing votes. <\/p>\n

A person familiar with the conversation, granted anonymity to describe the private discussion, said that \u201ctone and approach\u201d of the senators in the meeting \u201cdoesn\u2019t reflect what you see on the floor.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out a new Democratic counterproposal for ending the government shutdown: attaching a one-year extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies to a spending stopgap that would reopen agencies. Schumer outlined the proposal during a floor speech Friday that was heavily attended by other Democratic senators in a show of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}