The flashpoint of the 119th Congress will not be addressed this year. Lawmakers will head home for the holidays without a vote on extending ACA health subsidies.
The House and the Senate are set to take their last votes today before recessing for the year. A vote on the extension of COVID-era subsidies is not on the official schedule. The subsidies are set to expire on December 31. That means Congress will wait until January to address a guaranteed rise in healthcare costs.
A GOP-led healthcare package without a subsidy extension was passed by the House last night, but the Senate has no plans to take it up.
“We’ll deal with it in January,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters Wednesday. “These things take a lot of twists and turns. Just this week, we’ve had a lot of twists and turns.”
One such twist was a stunning coup against House Speaker Mike Johnson R-La., who had squashed hopes of a vote earlier this week. Several moderate Republicans sided with Democrats and pushed for a vote on extending healthcare subsidies before the deadline. One of those defectors, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said it was a “mistake” for Johnson and House leadership for not take the bipartisan proposal to the floor.
Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.
“They were worried that this bill…would pass,” Fitzpatrick said Wednesday. “That’s a terrible reason not to bring a bill to the floor, is fear that it’s going to pass,” he said.
For his part, Johnson said a vote on the Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies is “inevitable.”
“It will be on the floor that first week of January when we return,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday.
