House Republicans have no plans to include an extension for expiring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies in a short-term stopgap funding measure Congress needs to pass this week.
Democrats have demanded concessions on health care — many specifically pointing to the subsidies — as critical in exchange for their votes. If the subsidies expire at the end of the year, millions of Americans could otherwise see their health care premiums spike. A handful of vulnerable Republicans are likewise pressuring leadership to extend the subsidies but are less adamant they be included in a must-pass funding measure.
But Republican leadership currently has no plans to include an extension of the subsidies in the bill, according to three sources familiar with the matter, despite expressing openness to this idea recently, likely forcing a party-line vote in the House and hoping Senate Democrats cave and swallow the bill like they did in March. Republicans could only lose two votes in the House, and Rep. Thomas Massie is already a guaranteed ‘no’ vote.
While some sources cautioned that this could still change — and there are some members still trying to convince leadership to include it — the outlook for getting an extension included in a funding measure is grim.
“I would be surprised to see a full extension unless some kind of grand agreement,” one senior Republican member told NOTUS.
The current thinking among Republican leadership is that including an extension could cause more harm than good. Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus have already stressed they would block the funding bill from advancing if the extension is included.
The chair of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Andy Harris, recently told NOTUS that if leadership decided to include an extension of the subsidies in the continuing resolution, then they would have to “find their votes somewhere else.”
Including the extension would even cause leadership problems for members who are not part of the Freedom Caucus, such as House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington.
“I don’t think it’s worth even a discussion to expand a failed experiment in socialized medicine,” Arrington told NOTUS. “I feel like I’m in a parallel universe this week.”
Arrington added that leadership had seemed to have “left the door cracked for consideration” of extending the subsidies, and he wants to “kick that door closed.