The Senate will leave town this afternoon for 10 days with no deal to revive premium enhanced Obamacare subsidies, and no sign they’re moving toward any compromise on the key hang-ups.
Senators involved in bipartisan health care talks are struggling to reach agreement among themselves. Even if they can, the group would need to build consensus among senators on both sides of the aisle in order to pass a bill, somehow push the measure through the House and then convince President Donald Trump to sign it.
All of those steps are incredibly difficult. Meanwhile, the clock is close to running out. Open enrollment for marketplace plans ends today.
“We’re still in the red zone,” asserted Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, a GOP leader involved in the Obamacare talks.
Yet that’s exactly where Moreno said the negotiations were a week ago, and there’s been no breakthrough. In fact, it looks like things are going in the opposite direction.
Here’s why a deal is growing out of reach.
1) The Senate is nearly out of time.
Senators would restart open enrollment for Obamacare plans through March 1 as part of the already agreed-upon bipartisan framework. But every day that goes by shrinks that window. It may already be too late to change 2026 enrollment all that much. Initial Obamacare enrollment is way down.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Wednesday that negotiators will continue to meet during the Senate’s recess next week. Some of the participants will be abroad, however.
“Time’s not on our side,” Moreno acknowledged, lamenting that it’s been difficult to hold senators’ attention. “This can’t continue where we just drag it out because eventually you just run out of time.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has already said that any Obamacare deal would need to get done before the end of January. The recess next week, paired with the need to use the following week to pass the remaining FY2026 funding bills, makes it exceedingly difficult to meet that timeline.
2) The abortion funding dispute appears unsolvable.
Few issues paralyze dealmaking on Capitol Hill quite like the fight over abortion rights.
Anti-abortion groups are showing no sign of letting up in their pressure campaign to get new language restricting federal funding for abortion services added to any Obamacare subsidies deal. They’ve bashed potential compromises and forced many GOP lawmakers into a corner.
Plus, Trump’s comments last week urging Republicans to be “flexible” on Hyde have only backfired. Democrats have drawn a red line on the issue, and they have no incentive to give up ground.
3) Leadership doesn’t want any part of this.
The Obamacare negotiations are a toxic issue for the Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has continued to push Democrats’ three-year clean revival of the Obamacare credits as the only viable plan. Schumer has been under massive pressure to appease the Democratic base. A compromise with Republicans isn’t in Democrats’ political interest, and Schumer has been actively downplaying the chances of a deal.
“They ought to work with us to get costs lower. But they’re not doing that. They’re stuck,” Schumer told us. “Neither Thune nor Johnson says they want to extend the ACA credits by even a day.”
Thune has to manage GOP senators desperate for a deal — often in the name of their own political survival in November’s midterms — and those who despise any proposal that extends the Obamacare subsidies.
Thune has laid out the broad confines of the sort of compromise Republicans could potentially accept, but it would be tough for him to get more involved. For now, Thune has allowed the negotiations to proceed while warning that in order for any bipartisan compromise to be viable, it would need to win significant support from Republicans.
Meanwhile, Trump is largely uninvolved and distracted, consumed with foreign policy crises while pitching a string of populist economic ideas. Trump said he’s planning to release a health care framework this week, which could give some direction to the talks. But so far, Trump has largely lacked interest in options that involve extending the existing Obamacare subsidies.
Desperation runs deep. The one factor working in favor of rank-and-file lawmakers who want an Obamacare deal is sheer will.
House GOP moderates took drastic steps to force a floor vote on the issue. Seventeen House Republicans ultimately voted for a Democratic bill to restore the credits for three years — despite disliking the policy — in a sign of true desperation.
Even a staunch conservative, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), told us he’s been talking with some Senate Democrats about a bill to restore enhanced subsidies for people making over 400% of the federal poverty level with anti-fraud reforms. That policy mix would be a tough sell for most Democrats. But it underscores just how widespread the hope is for some kind of breakthrough.
On war powers. The Senate voted 51-50 late Wednesday — with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie — to kill the Venezuela war powers resolution, agreeing to a GOP argument that there are no active military operations in the country.
GOP Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Todd Young (Ind.) flipped after initially voting to advance the resolution last week, ensuring a major win for Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senate GOP leaders. Young said Rubio agreed to a public Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing “immediately after the recess.”
