Four moderate House Republicans joined all Democrats in signing a petition to force a vote on a measure that would extend expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits for another three years.
The Republican signers, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, brought the petition to 218 signatures — the first step to force the House to vote on legislation not put forward by leadership.
“Leadership left us no choice,” Lawler told reporters, minutes after signing on to the petition. “From my perspective, this issue is too important to fuck around with. You have people’s health care at stake, and it requires a vote. Ultimately, this will pass the House, and I bet you there will be a lot more people voting for it than you expect.”
The discharge petition needs time to “ripen” before the legislation can be put on the floor for a vote, which means it likely won’t get a vote until January. The House will go on recess this week for the holidays.
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“Mike Johnson needs to bring our bill to the floor immediately in order to protect the health care of the American people,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday morning.
If the legislation passes the House, its path in the Senate is less clear. Republicans blocked the same bill last week. Lawler, however, suggested that the upper chamber could feel pressure to act on the bill following a House vote.
“When it goes to the Senate, they will have a choice,” Lawler said. “If they want to come back with a bipartisan compromise, great. But the fact is, Congress needs to act.”
The COVID-era subsidies expire at the end of December, and more than 20 million Americans can expect to see their insurance premiums spike as a result.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on Wednesday he will “see what happens when it happens.”
“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 will vote on it” this week.
“A clean, three-year extension of the Biden COVID bonuses was on the Senate floor last week, and it failed,” Thune’s spokesperson Ryan Wrasse posted on X. “Under this proposal, people making $500k+ per year would continue to be eligible for what were supposed to be temporary COVID-era subsidies.”
The move from GOP moderates comes as Speaker Mike Johnson is feuding with the influential bloc over whether to put any sort of legislation that would extend the expiring tax credits on the floor for a vote. He instead moved to put another health care package on the floor for a vote on Wednesday, with no measures to address the expiring subsidies.
The GOP moderates decided to support the bill on Tuesday, after Johnson declined to advance an amendment to extend the subsidies, Lawler said.
“I would have preferred to have seen this go through the amendment process,” Bresnahan told NOTUS. “It was incredibly frustrating to see all three different variations of the amendment not make it to the House floor.”
The move shows a major fracture between moderates and Republican leadership on this major policy issue. Moderate Republicans have expressed concern about the expiring subsidies, with many arguing that a lapse in the credits could lead to many of them struggling in the 2026 midterms, as Americans are set to see their health care premiums rise as a result of the expiring tax credits.
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