{"id":16137,"date":"2025-12-01T13:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-health-deal-hinges-on-trump\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T13:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:04:08","slug":"capitol-agenda-health-deal-hinges-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-health-deal-hinges-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Health deal hinges on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Congress is back. Welcome to the December of Hellth.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers now have a mere 30 days to address expiring Obamacare tax credits and prevent health insurance hikes for millions of Americans. Republicans and Democrats agree success hangs on one question: Will President Donald Trump figure out what he wants<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Interpreting Trump\u2019s intentions has gotten tougher since lawmakers left Washington. Early in the break, Trump appeared to be on the brink of announcing a framework<\/a> to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies with new eligibility restrictions, only to pull back<\/a> after GOP criticism. He then said he doesn\u2019t want<\/a> to extend the subsidies but understands it might be necessary.<\/p>\n

Capitol Hill factions are trying to figure out what Trump wants and how to entice him to their side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president has got to sign whatever we do, otherwise it\u2019s a legislative exercise,\u201d says Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, the Pennsylvania Republican who is drafting what he describes as a bipartisan proposal that would largely align with last week\u2019s leaked White House framework.<\/p>\n

The timeline as we know it \u2014 <\/b>Though the ACA tax credits expire at month\u2019s end, some lawmakers are looking at Jan. 30, the next shutdown deadline, as the real cutoff for a health care deal.<\/p>\n

The Senate will vote as soon as Dec. 9 on an undefined health care proposal, the fulfillment of the bipartisan deal to re-open the government.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in the works \u2014 <\/b>Fitzpatrick and other centrists are looking to build bipartisan support for an extension of the subsidies with new income restrictions and other safeguards. Their efforts have loose backing from the Republican Main Street Caucus, whose chair Rep. Mike Flood (Neb.) endorsed the contours of the leaked White House health plan.<\/p>\n

A coalition of House and Senate Republicans that includes key committee chairs are working behind the scenes on a range of possible proposals, but there\u2019s no guarantee the GOP will fall in line or the lawmakers will produce a bill this year.<\/p>\n

Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) says he is \u201cworking to try to find a pathway to get some bipartisan solution\u201d \u2014 not a budget reconciliation bill.<\/p>\n

As a fail-safe, centrist House Republicans are prepared to launch a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a subsidy extension. But they\u2019re also trying to give space to the Senate to see if a bipartisan deal can be reached.<\/p>\n

Democrats have yet to reach a consensus.<\/p>\n

A group of Democrats including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (N.Y.) has been in close contact with Republicans including Fitzpatrick and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) about what could get bipartisan support. But others, including independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, want Democrats to embrace a sweeping health care plan that could be a rallying cry for the midterms but has no chance of winning GOP votes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s widespread skepticism that Republicans will agree to any plan that isn\u2019t fully endorsed by Trump. A significant swath of GOP lawmakers will simply never vote to extend anything related to Obamacare, according to three GOP aides granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the trouble today,\u201d says Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). \u201cYou can have good-faith negotiations with Republicans, but it just doesn\u2019t matter until Donald Trump weighs in.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 What\u2019s next for appropriations: <\/b>House GOP appropriators aren\u2019t yet ready to advance the two biggest outstanding funding bills \u2014 Defense and Labor-HHS-Education \u2014 and are instead rooting for a cross-chamber compromise on several smaller funding measures, with sights on enactment by month\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans are also looking for a smaller group of bills that could get signed into law as they continue to pursue a separate minibus that would pair defense funding with Labor-HHS-Education and other bills, according to two aides granted anonymity to disclose internal deliberations.<\/p>\n

Any appropriations bills finalized in the next three weeks would be ripe for hitching to a year-end agreement on health insurance subsidies, should one materialize.<\/p>\n

\u2014 NDAA deal incoming:<\/b> Lawmakers plan to release the final text of a compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act this week and tee up a House floor vote as soon as next week, though House and Senate leaders still need to sign off on the final product.<\/p>\n

Jordain Carney, Jennifer Scholtes, Katherine Tully-McManus and Connor O\u2019Brien contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress is back. Welcome to the December of Hellth. Lawmakers now have a mere 30 days to address expiring Obamacare tax credits and prevent health insurance hikes for millions of Americans. Republicans and Democrats agree success hangs on one question: Will President Donald Trump figure out what he wants? Interpreting Trump\u2019s intentions has gotten tougher […]<\/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-16137","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\/16137","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=16137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}