House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) distanced himself from a possible deal that could emerge from the Senate on healthcare as an effort to end the government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has promised Democrats he will schedule a vote on the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies in return for passing a funding bill, though he has been clear he cannot guarantee the passage of legislation on the matter.
“I’ve made this very clear to them, I can’t guarantee them an outcome,” Thune told reporters Thursday morning. “I can guarantee them a process, and they can litigate the issue, get the vote on the floor. And presumably, they have some way of getting a vote in the House at some point. But I can’t speak for the House, and obviously I can’t guarantee an outcome here. And they know that.”
But Thune’s assurances that the subsidies will get floor time in the Senate aren’t translating to the House, with Johnson telling reporters he would not be part of any “backroom deals.”
“We did our job, and I’m not part of negotiations,” Johnson said at a Thursday press conference on any deal made in the Senate. “The House did its job on September 19. I’m not promising anybody anything.”
The House has remained out of session the entirety of the shutdown as part of House GOP leadership’s strategy to put pressure on the upper chamber to pass the short-term funding bill, and Johnson has committed to keeping House lawmakers out of the District until a deal is struck in the upper chamber.
On the expiring credits, Johnson said Thursday that “everybody in the building knew we were going to have to wrestle through that,” saying that Democrats are “eating up all the clock where that would’ve been done” by not passing a deal to fund the government.
While Johnson has continuously said he will not tie any healthcare demands to government funding, the Senate has shown signs of reaching a possible breakthrough in negotiations.
Thune has said any deal on funding the government would need a new funding date, as the one passed by the House would only fund the government till Nov. 21, in order to give lawmakers time to pass a handful of the 12 appropriations bills to fund those subsets of the government through the fiscal year. Senate Democrats are meeting Thursday afternoon to talk through a possible deal to end the government shutdown.
As part of negotiations to end the shutdown, lawmakers have discussed reversing the reduction-in-forces implemented by the Trump administration. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told reporters it is his “principal issue.”
Kaine, when asked by the Washington Examiner if a deal that included the reversal of the RIFs would help him reach a yes on a government funding deal, the Democrat said “yes,” with the caveat that he would also want guarantees that RIFs would no longer occur going forward.
Extending the tax credits in some form has bipartisan support, with Republicans largely taking the approach that they want to see massive reforms to the program. House leadership and fiscal hawks have shown little to no interest in extending the credits, with the conservative Freedom Caucus issuing a statement on Tuesday that it will not back a new continuing resolution that includes anything related to the ACA credits.
The right-flank caucus is also opposed to a short-term funding patch that would end within this calendar year, as negotiations are ongoing between GOP and Democratic senators on how to achieve a deal.
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“Members of the Freedom Caucus support a Continuing Resolution as far into 2026 as possible … and it will block any further effort by Democrats and the Swamp to advance a budget-busting, pork-filled, lobbyist handout omnibus in November or December,” the Freedom Caucus said.
When asked if the HFC would support any ACA deal coming out of the Senate, as well as the bipartisan House proposal, one House Freedom Caucus member told the Washington Examiner, “the short answer is no.”
Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.