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.
“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.
