Originally published at: Group of House Republicans Join Dem Effort to Force Vote on ACA Subsidies Extension
Four House Republicans joined a Democratic discharge petition Wednesday morning to force a floor vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) signed the discharge petition to help Democrats get to…
Outside of blatantly starving, not much will drive people to rioting in the streets faster than losing healthcare and loved ones dying, going bankrupt. Then the riots. Then martial law. Then no election.
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Mike Johnson is having a bad day.
Anyway, I’m thinking pasta for dinner tonight.
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Whoa there cowboy. Slow down.
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Mike Johnson has achieved the impossible: making Kevin McCarthy look like a competent Speaker.
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Cancelling the Super-Bowl would bring people into the streets. On the verge of unconstitutionally declaring war on a Latin American country while murdering its citizens on the open seas? Not so much.
I wonder if there are enough republicans in endangered districts/states to push this over the age. I can see MTG voting on this to put her thumb in Mike Johnson’s eye, although I think she’d first need to pull Mikey’s head out of trump’s ass.
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I commented on this a while ago but the discharge petition that the four Republicans just signed does not in fact discuss extending the ACA subsidies.
H.R. 780 Text
The petition requires a vote on H.R. 1834.
And THAT bill is a Christmas tree beginning with a Congressional Time Capsule and not appearing to mention ACA healthcare subsidies at all.
It looks remarkably like a white panel van with back door open next to a scrawled “free candy” sign.
Can this all be happening with nothing reduced to text? And if so, at what point will the wheels on this just … stop (amid widespread indecipherable blamecasting)?
Here was The Hill article from awhile ago. HeatherCoxRichardson also pointed to Pete Aguilar as saying this discharge petition was a thing. And he’s still saying it today.
I am mystified. The Epstein Files petition contained a copy of the actual legislation in the must-vote-on-bill. I think the others that have passed were the same. Certainly the no Congressional stock trading discharge petition does.
This is not a cordial House that can be trusted to just work things out on the fly; for the good of the country.
ETA: This - Schumer’s Senate bill - is what 3-year ACA extension legislation looks like.
There is nothing like this in the discharge petition or the House bill referenced therein.
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So is Johnson’s days numbered? Me thinks so.
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Maybe they could rerun Heidi.
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So to sum up, without a plausible way through the senate this is pretty much a non-story.
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Trump, Mike Johnson, et al, like to wear the cloak of their so-called Christianity. They are all fakes, evil fakes.
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You mean like during COVID? Didn’t seem to cause the politicians to enact government funded health care.
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What shape pasta?
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Penne
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my father’s favorite
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Republican Health Plan: If you get sick, die quickly.
This is all for show. No way anything coming from the House, especially originating from the Democrats, will get passed by the Senate and even if it did, the criminal clown would just veto the bill then get back to sniffing the glue that attaches the fake gold in the oval office. But even so, this effort underscores just what a breathtaking failure Mike Johnson has turned out to be.
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The Republican infighting as the MAGA movement crumbles is going to be gothically gruesome, and glorious to behold.
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These bozos are only doing this in a desperate attempt to save their electoral asses in the mid terms next year. I do not think they will be successful. They deservedly get painted with the same brush as MAGAts at large, because they largely support and enable trump and MAGA policies. This will be far too little, far too late or their dem opponents need to be excoriated for incompetence letting them claim any credit for this desperate effort to save themselves. They collectively could have prevented us from being in this situation, which they chose not to. That bill will come due in November 2026. It’s sucks to be them
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Correct,that is the plan. These 4 republicans are just trying to create a fig leaf to protect their seats in the mid term elections. They want to say they signed a discharge position because they are soooooo committed to not harming their constituents by having their health care premiums go up, blame the democrats for a system that allows for the premiums to go up, all the while indicating thet they are working on a “common sense” republicans healthcare plan that will deliver better results than any dem plan, at a lower than current cost, all the while preserving “freedom” . I don’t think it is going to work but the r’s are separate to keep kicking the can down the road because they know that single payer is what will come next.
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So much confusion today.
Raw Story has a wild article about the House cutting off debate prematurely as if on a 3-year ACA extension.
Four moderate Republicans signed on to the discharge petition Wednesday circulated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to force a vote on on the measure, which would extend the tax credits for three years, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) ended the voting before it was completed.
“Crazy scenes going on in the house floor,” reported Reese Gorman for NOTUS. “The chair just closed the vote on ordering the previous question when it was at 204-203. Some democrats hadn’t voted yet and were trying to vote no. They are livid rn and shouting at the chair.”
But that is definitely not what has happened. First, as noted above neither HR 780 (the discharge petition the 4 Republican members signed onto this morning) or the bill it forces a vote on - HR 1834 - references extending ACA enhanced subsidies at all. Second, today’s activity in the House did not reference either of those bills anyway.
Instead there seems to have been discussion and drama about HR 6703, which is one of many fake Republican plans to fix healthcare.
Here is today’s activity in the House.
Contained in that article is a handy-dandy chart listing the various legislative gambits currently floating around. The first one listed (Miller-Meeks) seems to be the HR 6703 which was discussed today in the House. It does not extend enhanced ACA subsidies per the chart.
To recap, using only information provided by the Clerk of the House: there was no vote today on the discharge petition that four Republican members signed this morning; that was a different House bill that ALSO does not extend the enhanced ACA subsidies.
The public reporting on this that I am seeing is really loosey goosey assuming things and never linking to any official reporting source, e.g. official Clerk of the House text. This isn’t just today - Pete Aguilar and the four Republicans and a bunch of Dems all think they signed onto some three year extension discharge petition. And that is a little terrifying.
It will be nothing but bad news if Representatives don’t know what they are voting on either because (A) they just don’t know what the day’s agenda actually is or (B) they think they are voting on text that the Clerk of the House somehow just doesn’t know about yet. I’m pretty clear that isn’t how it works – it’s the text on file with the Clerk that establishes what Members’ votes mean.
I don’t see how any ACA subsidy extension comes out of this mess if people don’t start reporting facts. There may not be any grownups anywhere.
Sausage-making: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/12/17/congress/problem-solvers-meeting-obamacare-00695105 Senators are going to gut what House gives them, so any bill is a place-holder.
Four of them, including Problem Solvers Co-chair Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), broke ranks Wednesday and completed a discharge petition led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. …
“They’re going to have to put something on the floor,” Fitzpatrick said of the Senate in an interview. “We’re going to send them a vehicle. … I mean, that was the whole point of the meeting with the senators.”