This is the last scheduled week in session for the House and Senate before the Christmas recess. Lawmakers won’t be back until after Jan. 5.
It’s a big week for two reasons. The Senate will take up and pass the NDAA, the annual defense policy bill that’s been enacted every year for 64 years. The 3,000-plus page package has passed the House, so the Senate is the last stop for this train. The Senate will also clear a package of nearly 100 nominees and hold floor votes on some individual nominees.
But the main focus will be the House. Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leaders will move forward with the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act, their response to the Dec. 31 expiration of the enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits.
Johnson is now facing a rebellion among moderates, which could blow up his health care bill. More on that in a moment.
The big picture. With just 17 days until the Obamacare tax credits expire, we can say definitively that Congress — and the country — is going over the Obamacare cliff. Even if the House passes something, the Senate isn’t going to move anything by the deadline.
Both GOP and Democratic leaders have decided, for their own internal reasons, that doing nothing is better than having a bipartisan deal.
This may be one of the biggest moments of the 2026 election cycle. Millions of Americans could lose health insurance or face dramatically higher premiums. With the U.S. economy in a fragile state, the stakes — both personal and political — couldn’t be higher.
House Republicans are saying they’ll spend the first half of 2026 on health care policy. Since Johnson said that to us last week, hardline conservatives have latched onto the speaker’s promise.
But doing this could play into Democrats’ hands. Republicans are deeply divided on the issue, while the American public trusts Democrats more. A double negative in this case doesn’t make a Republican positive.
The GOP bill. This Republican proposal is extremely narrow, which isn’t a criticism but rather a statement of fact. The bill calls for a limited reform of pharmacy benefit managers — mostly transparency provisions, but not a broader crackdown as Republicans have previously proposed.
The bill has the cost-sharing reductions that the Senate parliamentarian knocked out during the One Big Beautiful Bill Act debate. Plus a codification of association health plans, which allows businesses to pool together to offer insurance. It also clarifies stop-loss insurance.
Yet the package has no expansion of health savings accounts, a policy the GOP has been touting for years.
Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s theory here is that the GOP is stringing together popular policies to ensure passage. All of these policies have previously been approved by the House. Republicans believe Democrats will have a tough time voting against these provisions, but we don’t really think they will.
Democrats’ policy position is quite clear: they want to extend the enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies.
Even if this Republican bill were to become law — which it won’t — it would do little if anything in the short term to help Americans who can no longer afford their health care.
Inside an amendment snafu. Last week, Johnson’s leadership team struck a deal to give Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) a vote on an amendment to extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
But that process has completely broken down because of an impasse over the amendment text. There’s no longer a deal and moderates will go their own way.
Fitzpatrick, Kiggans, and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.) will go to the House Rules Committee Tuesday to offer their amendment, which would extend the subsidies for two years alongside income caps and anti-fraud reforms. They expect it to be rejected. It’s unclear what the moderates will do after that. They’d effectively be free agents.
This raises major questions. Can Johnson pass his health care bill without the moderates? The leadership could try to split the group and get someone else — besides these four — to offer an amendment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries could be the beneficiary of this GOP discord. Will the GOP moderates support the Democrats’ discharge petition — which has 214 signatures — and push it over the finish line?
Four Senate Republicans voted to advance a three-year extension of the subsidies, which is identical to Jeffries’ proposal, so the House GOP moderates would have some political cover.
Remember: There’s the aforementioned Fitzpatrick petition, which has 12 Republican signatures. And Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) has another petition with 11 GOP signatures and 28 Democratic signatures.
Gottheimer’s bill is slightly more straightforward. It’s a shorter, one-year Obamacare subsidies extension with income caps and a structure meant to set up a later vote on a longer extension.
But top Democrats have so far held off on backing either compromise. Rep. Richie Neal (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, is calling anything less than a clean three-year extension of the subsidies a “waste of time.”
Also: Despite a renewed push by Senate GOP leaders late last week, conservatives are still standing in the way of the next minibus funding package. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP appropriators have been eager to hold an initial procedural vote before January, when there will be precious few legislative days before the Jan. 30 shutdown deadline.
