This is the second-to-last week in session this year for your United States Congress. The Senate returns this afternoon and the House comes back Tuesday evening. House Republican staff directors are in Boston for a retreat.
Both chambers will be focused on health care and defense policy.
With little time left in 2025, the political and policy stakes are high. The NDAA, the annual Pentagon policy bill, has passed every year for the last 64 years, so there’s a ton of urgency on that front.
However, there’s little urgency among Republican leaders in either chamber to address the expiring Obamacare subsidies, although we’re seeing signs of life from rank-and-file GOP lawmakers. Let’s start there.
News: GOP senators who represent dueling ideological factions in the Republican Conference are teaming up on a plan to extend the Obamacare subsidies for two years with income caps and other reforms.
The new proposal from Republican Sens. Bernie Moreno (Ohio) and Susan Collins (Maine), outlined in this one-pager, would cap income eligibility and eliminate zero-premium plans by requiring a $25 minimum monthly payment.
Under the Moreno-led plan, the full tax credit would be available for households with income of up to 400% of the poverty level, and then gradually phase out so that households making over $200,000 would no longer benefit.
It comes as the Senate is set to vote this week — likely Thursday — on Democratic legislation that extends the tax credits for three years, a promise Senate Majority Leader John Thune made to end the recent government shutdown. This won’t get anywhere close to 60 votes.
But Senate Republicans aren’t expected to hold a separate vote on a unified proposal of their own, a dynamic that’s fueling some GOP frustration with Thune, as we reported Friday.
Strange pair. Moreno has been in office for less than a year and represents the newer generation of GOP senators who are more aligned with the MAGA movement. Collins — who’s up for reelection next year — is a moderate dealmaker who didn’t vote for President Donald Trump and frequently breaks with him.
Moreno and Collins joining forces here reflects the broader concern among Republicans about the political impact of the year-end ACA subsidy cliff.
Yet the reality is that there still isn’t an alternative to Democrats’ legislation that unites Republicans. And Senate GOP leaders don’t want to counter Democratic unity on a messaging bill with a vote that splinters the GOP, as this one likely would.
But many Republicans, especially those up in 2026, want to be able to vote for something that’s not the three-year clean extension Democrats are pushing.
Other possible GOP alternatives include Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) bid to expand HSA options. There’s also Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) legislation, which mirrors what Trump has pitched. Scott’s bill has some momentum in the House, where Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) is backing it.
Thune and other top Senate Republicans maintain that they don’t view this week as the deadline to offer a proposal that could get 60 votes — leaving open the possibility, however slim, of averting the cliff.
Speaker Mike Johnson told us Thursday that he plans to settle on a health care bill this week, with the key days being today and tomorrow. It’s safe to say that whatever Johnson puts on the floor won’t become law. But the big question for Johnson is whether his bill will include some sort of extension of the Obamacare subsidies.
Even if it does, that may not be enough to stop House GOP moderates from trying to force a compromise through the chamber with a discharge petition. The House Republicans seeking an ACA patch want it pretty badly. They’re pursuing a bunch of options in the desperate hope that something gets traction. A discharge petition would be a time-consuming long shot.
Now onto the NDAA. Leading lawmakers unveiled the compromise version of the annual defense policy bill that would authorize more than $900 billion in national security spending, repeal two decades-old war powers laws and give servicemembers a 3.8% pay bump.
The spending topline, which became a late-in-the-game issue for defense authorizers as they worked with appropriators to find consensus, represents an $8 billion increase over what the White House requested.
The release of the NDAA came after days of last-minute negotiations as lawmakers scrambled to reach an agreement on the fate of a massive housing supply bill that senators added to their version of the measure. The ROAD to Housing Act was ultimately left out of the final text amid pushback from House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.).
Other areas of disagreement centered on a proposed expansion of in vitro fertilization coverage for servicemembers and their families. Though the provision was included in both the House and Senate versions of the NDAA, it ran into resistance from Johnson and was left out of the final legislation.
Beyond that, the bill notably included a bicameral push to repeal the 2002 Iraq War and 1991 Gulf War AUMFs. Both the House and Senate versions of the NDAA contained repeal language.
But the final bill left out military base renaming provisions that also saw bipartisan support. The language aimed to thwart the administration’s attempts to rename certain installations after Confederate leaders. Trump vetoed the FY2021 NDAA due in part to its base-naming measures, though Congress overrode the veto.
The House needs to take the NDAA up this week for the Senate to act the week of Dec. 15. The House Rules Committee will meet on the bill Tuesday afternoon.
