There are just three days left for legislating before the House leaves town for the December recess.
With unemployment rising, prices still stubbornly high and health care costs about to soar through the roof for millions of Americans, House Republican moderates are at a crossroads with their own leadership.
House Republicans’ most vulnerable members — several of whom represent districts that President Donald Trump lost in 2024 — view extending the expiring Obamacare enhanced premium tax credits as an absolute political imperative.
But they’re getting nowhere with senior Republicans, especially Speaker Mike Johnson. And conservative hardliners have concerns ranging from cost to limits on abortion coverage.
Here are two things to remember today:
1) Johnson doesn’t want to extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. At all. He’s very much opposed to them. In fact, the entire House Republican leadership would like these subsidies to expire, believing that Democrats are to blame for everything wrong with health care. GOP leaders say their bill, a relatively limited package, should absolve rank-and-file Republicans of any blame for the rising cost of health care.
2) House Republican moderates feel like they need to do something drastic to ensure that the chamber holds a vote on extending the tax credits.
The House Rules Committee, which Johnson nominally controls, rejected a trio of amendments from moderates to the GOP health care bill Tuesday night. These amendments would have, in different ways, extended the Obamacare subsidies.
This came after a days long back-and-forth between Johnson and Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.). Johnson and other senior House Republicans pushed for the moderates to offset the cost of proposals, but they balked at this idea. In private meetings, Johnson also relayed concern about moving forward without abortion funding restrictions.
What’s abundantly clear is that there’s no way for the GOP leadership to bridge its differences with the moderate Republicans. This leaves the moderates on the brink of a major decision. They appear to have just two options left.
These centrist members can sign onto House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ discharge petition for a three-year clean extension of the subsidies. Or they can return home empty-handed as the Dec. 31 deadline approaches and health care premiums spike for millions of Americans. They don’t feel like they have any good choices.
“The only thing worse than a clean extension without any income limits and any reforms — because it’s not a perfect system — the only thing worse than that would be expiration,” Fitzpatrick said at the Rules Committee meeting Tuesday night. “And I would make that decision.”
After a group of the moderates left Rules — where their amendments were ruled out of order — a handful of them told Fitzpatrick they’ll likely follow his lead in deciding what to do next. Fitzpatrick had a conversation with the House GOP leadership Tuesday night and will make his decision this morning.
It would take only four House Republicans to put Jeffries’ discharge petition over the 218-signature threshold and guarantee a January floor vote.
The Republicans to watch include Fitzpatrick, Lawler, Valadao, Kiggans, Pennsylvania Reps. Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.). Greene is leaving Congress in early January and is hammering Johnson on her way out the door.
The fallout. In many respects, the GOP moderates feel as if they’ve been knocked around by their own leadership all year. All of them except Fitzpatrick voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, which included hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid that they staunchly opposed.
Moderates have been forced to vote on an endless parade of hardline conservative messaging bills. And now when these members need a policy win, they aren’t able to secure one from Johnson and party leaders.
The negotiations have only further escalated frustrations inside the GOP conference, which was clear from a tense closed-door lunch with Johnson and Republican Governance Group members Tuesday.
Following the RG2 lunch, there was an attempt to circumvent the core group of moderates. Several other Republicans floated taking over an amendment with Fitzpatrick’s text and newly-added offsets. The House GOP leadership was ready to support these efforts and accept them as a deal. Fitzpatrick objected.
The big picture. Since the end of the government shutdown last month — including Johnson’s stunning decision to keep the House out of session for nearly two months — the chamber has been in a wild, chaotic state.
Members are fed up with top-down decision-making, especially on the GOP side, as evidenced by the explosion in discharge petitions and intra-party brawls.
In fact, this is a pivotal moment for Trump and the GOP in the 2026 cycle.
Republicans were crushed in the November special elections, with the American people losing trust in Trump’s handling of the economy. Inflation and unemployment are slowly rising. It’s taking longer for Americans to find jobs when they’re out of work. Consumer confidence is tumbling.
Now factor in a bumbling, unpopular GOP-run Congress that’s doing nothing — even worse, voting to do nothing — while health-care premiums soar for millions of Americans. This has the makings of a very rough election year for the endangered House Republican majority.
