A discharge petition to force a vote on an extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday morning, with four moderate Republicans joining Democrats in signing it.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) gave Democrats the four signatures they needed to meet the majority threshold of 218 members to force the bill out of committee and bypass leadership, the website of the clerk of the House of Representatives shows.
On Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Republican leadership could not come to an agreement with their more centrist caucus members after a closed-door meeting on the issue, Breitbart News reported:
There’s about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure they reduce costs for all of their constituents. And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare Covid-era subsidy that Democrats created. We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve, and it just was not to be. We worked on it all the way through the weekend, in fact. And in the end there was not an agreement — it wasn’t made.
Lawler did not hold back in sharing his opinion at the time, calling it “absolute bullshit.”
“I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bullshit, and it’s absurd,” the New York congressman said. “Everybody has a responsibility to serve their district, to serve their constituents. You know what’s funny? Three-quarters of people on Obamacare are in states Donald Trump won. So maybe, just maybe, everybody should look at this and say, how do we actually fix the health care system?”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries then called on four Republicans to “join us” — which they ended up doing.
According to Fitzpatrick, he was forced to join the Democrats on the petition because Republican leadership refused to “compromise,” NBC News reported.
The outlet quoted Fitzpatrick’s statement:
House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments. As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge. Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.
Though the discharge petition garnered enough signatures, the Obamacare funding bill is not expected to make it to the floor before the December 31 deadline. Seven legislative days need to lapse before it is brought to the floor — but lawmakers head home for the holidays on Friday.
Representatives return to Washington, D.C. on January 6, and the vote on the extension is likely to occur during the next week.
The bill would still face a challenge in the Senate if it passes the House, with Senate Republicans rejecting an extension just last week, Breitbart News reported.
Meanwhile, Republicans are working to pass their own healthcare plan, with the House advancing the rule for the “Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act” in a 213-209 Wednesday morning vote. A final vote is expected around 5:30 p.m., CBS News reported.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday found that the House Republican healthcare reform package, unveiled last week, would lower premiums by 11 percent and would save $35.6 billion through 2035. However, the bill would “decrease the number of people with health insurance by an average of 100,000 over the 2027-2035 period,” the CBO estimated.
As Breitbart News’s Sean Moran reported, the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act would:
- Increase transparency for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)
- Appropriate funding for cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that would lower premiums
- Expand access to Association Health Plans (AHPs) that would allow self-employed workers and other membership-based organizations such as Costco, Amazon, or Sam’s Club to create their own health insurance pools
- Ensure small- and mid-sized employers can protect themselves from catastrophic claims
- Codify first Trump term-era rules that would allow employers to offer defined contributions to employees to purchase their own health insurance
Senate Republicans have also been pushing their own healthcare proposal, informally known as the Crapo-Cassidy plan, which “would fulfill Trump’s vision to send federal healthcare dollars directly to patients instead of going indirectly to them through health insurers,” Breitbart News reported last week.
“Our views on health care and the Democrat views on health care are very different, and I think that’s a difficult challenge that we have to figure out how to overcome,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters Tuesday, according to NBC. “But if they’re willing to accept changes that actually would put more power and control and resources in the hands of the American people and less of that in the pockets of the insurance companies, I think there’s a path forward.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
