This is Day 17 of the government shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to this crisis.
It’s true that there are House Republicans eager to extend the enhanced Obamacare premium tax credits. A significant number of them.
It’s also true that when Republicans are being honest, they’ll admit privately that if Congress fails to extend the credits and premiums skyrocket for millions of Americans, the GOP will be to blame.
But here’s another truth: House Republican leadership really doesn’t want to extend these tax credits. And their view is only hardening as the shutdown drags on.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was our guest on Fly Out Day this week. Scalise has a unique perspective on health care policy and politics. He’s the only member of the House Republican leadership who was in Congress during the Obamacare wars of the early 2010s. Scalise served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee for much of his time in the rank and file.
We asked Scalise plainly: Would you vote to extend these tax credits? Here’s what he said:
“No. In fact, Sen. [John] Fetterman pointed this out very accurately, I think, yesterday. He said that the tax credits were created to be temporary by the Democrats. It was the Democrats who set them up to expire, right? They never wanted them to be permanent.”
That’s not precisely what Fetterman said. He said that Democrats “designed” the subsidies “to expire at the end of the year. … Let’s have a conversation to extend it and not shut down our government.”
We pressed Scalise again: At this time, will Congress allow the credits to expire?
“Right now, the Democrats set them up to expire,” Scalise said. “That’s how the law works. That’s how Democrats set them up to work. Clearly, they didn’t want them to go on.”
So just to review, Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, said he wouldn’t vote to extend these credits. And according to Scalise, the credits are used to “bail out insurance companies” and extending them will do nothing to stop skyrocketing costs.
This isn’t just idle talk from Scalise. The Louisiana Republican is well versed on the subject matter, and he has an extremely good read of what’s happening inside the House GOP Conference. Scalise is expressing what is the overwhelming sentiment among his Republican colleagues right now.
Inside the House Republican leadership, the belief is that somewhere between 20% and 30% of GOP lawmakers would be open to extending the tax credits at the heart of the government shutdown. The House has been out of session for the last 28 days, so it’s impossible to make an independent judgement about whether that estimate is correct.
But what’s clear is that it’s wildly wrong to believe that House Republicans would simply return to Capitol Hill and pass an extension of the subsidies without vigorous debate and a drastic overhaul of the program.
“And Democrats know that,” Scalise said. “They know that the mess they created — and I know they’re trying to dump the problems of Obamacare off on everybody, other than the people that actually passed and voted for Obamacare. Those high premiums are a result of Democrat policies. If they really wanted to work with us on lower premiums, there are a lot of bipartisan ideas that you could come to the table and bring and do, and they’ve got to stop fighting the things that have been proven to work, as well.”
Those bipartisan ideas that Scalise is referring to include association health plans, which allow employers to join together to buy insurance plans, plus health savings accounts.
Democrats’ theory of the case is that GOP leaders like Scalise aren’t worth listening to because President Donald Trump will make the ultimate decision about whether Republicans cut a deal to extend these subsidies. That’s fair enough. Republicans do what Trump wants regardless of whether it controverts decades of GOP political orthodoxy. See the $5 trillion debt limit increase in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a prime example.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has tried for weeks to lure Trump into the shutdown talks. Trump has seemed completely uninterested.
But for now, Trump seems completely comfortable with letting the shutdown continue. And Scalise’s proclamations about the state of the GOP conference are worth internalizing to understand just how House Republicans truly feel.
Scalise also talked about Louisiana politics — he declined to endorse Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). Check out the full episode.
Vibe shift. This was a throwaway week in the Senate. Nothing happened to resolve the funding impasse. Senate Democrats have now filibustered the House-passed CR 10 times, while also blocking the full-year defense appropriations bill.
But with the shutdown poised to enter its fourth week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is trying something new.
The Senate is expected to vote next week on a GOP proposal to pay federal employees who’ve been forced to work without pay during the shutdown, including the military. Senate Republicans will also keep forcing votes on the Nov. 21 CR.
This is a shift for Thune, who had previously resisted these piecemeal efforts as he pushed for Democrats to back the stopgap funding bill. But tensions are flaring in the Senate, and Thune wants to put Democrats on the spot.
“These are not people who want to get things done,” Thune fumed on Thursday. “These are people who want to fight Trump and appease all the people that are coming into town this weekend.”
