House GOP revolt forces vote on ACA subsidies

What happened

The House Wednesday night passed a health care bill proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) that would lower some costs modestly but not extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. Defying Johnson, four of the Republicans who pushed his bill to its narrow 216-211 passage also signed a discharge petition Wednesday, clinching the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies for three years.

Who said what

Several politically vulnerable Republicans had pushed Johnson to allow a vote on their proposals to extend the ACA credits for a year or two, with new limits, to avert a sharp rise in premiums for 24 million Americans in January. “But with most Republicans opposed to the subsidies, Johnson refused to allow an extension in his bill, fomenting the strongest rebellion among Republicans from swing districts to date,” The Washington Post said.

“To me, the clean three-year extension is not ideal,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the four Republicans who signed the Democrats’ petition. “But doing nothing is not an answer.” Johnson “forced this outcome,” said fellow moderate rebel Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.).

The “stunning maneuver” by the House GOP “splinter group” was “all but guaranteed to prolong Republican infighting over health care, an issue that has bedeviled the party for years, into a midterm election year” with “considerable headwinds,” The New York Times said. It was also the “latest evidence” that Johnson’s “grip on his fractious majority has slipped” as “rank-and-file Republicans openly question his leadership and flout his wishes,” advancing four “once rare” discharge petitions, a feat last achieved in 1938. “I have not lost control of the House,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday.

What next?

Johnson’s bill “is dead on arrival in the Senate and will do little to quell a major intraparty split over the future of the subsidies,” Politico said. Senate GOP leaders say the three-year extension, if it passes the House next month, is also “doomed to die” in the upper chamber, but “House GOP moderates are now discussing options with their Senate counterparts about a bipartisan compromise bill that could pass both chambers” before the end of January, after the subsidies have lapsed.