On Wednesday morning, a handful of frontline Republicans shocked Washington when they crossed the aisle and signed onto a discharge petition to force the House of Representatives to vote on an extension of the expanded health care tax credits.
It was a total self-inflicted wound by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had undermined the Republicans from swing districts.
Reps. Mike Lawler of New York as well as Pennsylvania Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie’s decision came after the House Rules Committee swatted down amendments on a grab-bag bill of disjointed health care policies that would have included an extension of the subsidies.
These Republicans, all of whom represent swing districts, had no choice but to cross the aisle to save their own re-election chances as at least 22 million Americans risk seeing their premiums spike. Now there will be a vote on the Covid-era expanded tax credits for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace. Given the boiling frustration with Johnson, expect a jailbreak where other Republicans join out of self-preservation.
But even if this passes, any extension of the tax credits would hit the brick wall that is the United States Senate, and there does not seem to be an appetite to get it through among Republican leadership.
“I mean, I think we need to hear from our leadership what they will and won't put on the floor,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told The Independent. The Missouri senator is one of the few Republicans who has wanted an extension of the subsidies, albeit with some restrictions to ensure the money does not pay for abortions.
Any legislation would need to overcome a filibuster and therefore earn 60 votes.
Last week, the Senate voted down a clean extension of the tax credits, which likely makes legislation from the House a nonstarter, no matter how big the vote is. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that any legislation would need to raise the sufficient revenue.
“I don’t know that there will be, but we’ll see,” Thune said.
As votes began on Wednesday, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the two moderates in the Republican conference, chatted with each other. Collins and some of the other dealmakers in the Senate huddled on the floor.
“It's not unreasonable that he wants to have seen what we're going to come up with before he takes a position,” Collins told The Independent. “The general contours of the proposal that all of us in our group are working on are out there, but he understandably would want to see the specifics.”
Murkowski, who angered many Democratic senators with her vote for the One Big, Beautiful Bill, said she hoped that the discharge petition could be a sparkplug for action in the Senate.
“We're going to work on how we avoid this cliff and get something signed into law, not just messaging,” she told The Independent.
But Collins and Murkowski, both of whom opposed the 2017 repeal of the Affordable Care Act, are very much in the minority. Despite the fact that Republicans have never really figured out what they want a health care bill to look like, or crafted a response to Obamacare, most Republicans still do not want their fingerprints on anything that would look like salvaging the bill.
“We've already voted against that very same provision in the Senate,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo told The Independent.
There’s also the fact that while all of the moderates in the race need to save themselves, most Republican Senators represent deep-red states.
While Fitzpatrick and Lawler represent seats that voted for Kamala Harris, and Bresnahan and Mackenzie beat incumbent Democrats last year, Collins is the only Republican senator from a state that voted for Harris and she faces a tough re-election.
But Republicans might not have much of a choice in the matter.
“So I think that the Democrats have to expect there could be some change here, but the fact that we're gonna have a vehicle that we could potentially react to, I think, is promising,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told The Independent. “I, for one, think we have to come up with a solution.”
Tillis wound up riding the elevator with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican who could face a tough race in an anti-Republican midterm.
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