WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Republican leaders in the U.S. House who have struggled to come up with a way to address spiraling health insurance costs will face a floor vote in early 2026 on Democrats’ plan to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for three more years.
The House vote on that legislation will be required after a handful of moderate Republicans signed on to a discharge petition Wednesday morning. Their dissent with leadership sent a strong signal they are frustrated with the majority’s policies and the rising cost of health care for their constituents.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after a morning vote series on the floor, where he was seen in a heated exchange with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, that the two “just had some intense fellowship” and “it’s all good.”
Lawler is one of the four centrist Republicans who signed the discharge petition, putting it over the threshold of 218 to force a vote on the legislation.
“We’re working through very complex issues as we do here all the time,” Johnson said. “Everybody’s working towards ideas — we’re keeping the productive conversation going.”
The speaker also mounted his own defense, saying he has “not lost control of the House.”
That chamber has seen chaos and intraparty divides in the aftermath of the government shutdown, when Johnson opted to send lawmakers home for nearly two months.
“We have the smallest majority in U.S. history,” Johnson said. “These are not normal times — there are processes and procedures in the House that are less frequently used when there are larger majorities, and when you have the luxury of having 10 or 15 people who disagree on something, you don’t have to deal with it, but when you have a razor-thin margin, as we do, then all the procedures in the book people think are on the table, and that’s the difference.”
Senate approach
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he hadn’t yet decided whether to put the House Democrats’ bill on the floor if it is passed and arrives.
“Well, we’ll see. I mean, we obviously will cross that bridge when we come to it,” Thune said. “Even if they have a sufficient number of signatures, I doubt they vote on it this week.”
Thune said the discharge petition on the three-year ACA tax credits extension is far different from the discharge petition that forced a House floor vote on a bill to require the release of the Epstein files. Files related to Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges, have become a target of Congress and victims in recent months.
“That came over here pretty much unanimously, 427 to 1,” Thune said.
“And my assumption is this discharge petition is going to be a very, probably, partisan vote.”
The Senate voted earlier this month on Democrats’ three-year ACA tax credits legislation, a move that Thune agreed to in order to get enough Democratic votes to end the government shutdown. That bill, which is identical to the House version, was unable to get the 60 votes needed to advance on a 51-48 vote.
Both chambers are set to leave Capitol Hill later this week for their two-week winter break and won’t return to work until the week of Jan. 5.
Frustration breaks through
The House is scheduled to vote later Wednesday on Republican leaders’ own health care bill, after the chamber voted 213-209 to approve the rule that sets up debate on the legislation.
The bill, which Johnson released Friday evening, doesn’t extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits that Democrats originally created during the coronavirus pandemic. The enhanced credits are set to sunset at the end of this month.
Johnson decided Tuesday not to allow the House to debate any amendments to the bill, blocking moderate Republicans from having their bipartisan proposal to extend the ACA marketplace tax credits with modifications taken up.
That led to considerable frustration, and Wednesday morning, Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, along with New York’s Lawler, signed the Democrats’ discharge petition, putting it at the 218 signatures needed to force a floor vote in that chamber.
“We’ve worked for months with both parties, in both chambers, and with the White House, all in good faith, to balance all equities and offer a responsible bridge that successfully threaded the needle,” Fitzpatrick wrote in a statement.
“Our only request was a Floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue,” Fitzpatrick added. “That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments. House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments. As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge. Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”
Jeffries introduced petition
The discharge petition, introduced last month by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, sat just below the signatures needed for weeks as centrist Republicans tried to broker a deal that could become law.
When that logjam broke with the moderates’ signatures, it set up a House floor vote, but any legislation must move through the Senate as well and gain President Donald Trump’s signature.
Without a law to extend the enhanced ACA marketplace subsidies, roughly 22 million Americans will see their health insurance premiums spike by thousands of dollars next year, if they can fit the rise in costs into their budgets.
