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The House of Representatives passed a bill to revive and extend COVID-19 pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies in a major victory for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
Seventeen House Republicans broke ranks with GOP leaders to support the legislation after Democrats were successful in forcing a vote via a mechanism called a privileged resolution. The bill passed 230-196.
A discharge petition is a mechanism for getting legislation considered on the House floor even if the majority’s leadership is opposed to it, provided the petition gets a majority of House lawmakers’ signatures.
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Jeffries filed a discharge petition late last year, which was then signed by four House Republicans — helping it clinch the critical majority threshold.
Five more House Republicans joined Democrats in a vote Wednesday evening to advance the legislation for final consideration Thursday.
The 17 Republicans who voted for the legislation were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.; Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa.; Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa.; Mike Carey, R-Ohio; Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas; Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y.; Jeff Hurd, R-Colo.; Dave Joyce, R-Ohio; Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., Max Miller, R-Ohio; Zach Nunn, R-Iowa; Maria Salazar, R-Fla.; Dave Valadao, R-Calif.; Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis.; and Rob Wittman, R-Va.
It underscores the perilously slim margins Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is governing with.
House Republicans hold just a two-vote majority with full attendance on both sides, numbers that could easily shift when lawmakers are absent for personal or health reasons.
As Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., put to reporters on Wednesday morning, “We are one flu season away from losing the majority.”
The successful vote on Thursday is a blow for Johnson, who argued for weeks that the majority of House Republicans were opposed to extending the COVID-19 pandemic-era tax subsidies.
But a significant number of GOP moderates were frustrated that their party leaders in the House and Senate had done little to avert a price hike for millions of Americans’ insurance premiums.
A Democrat-controlled Congress voted twice, in 2020 and in 2021, to enhance Obamacare subsidies to give more people access to federal healthcare during the pandemic.
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Those subsidies were only extended through 2025, however.
The vast majority of Republicans believe the subsidies are a COVID-era relic of a long-broken federal healthcare system. Conservatives argued that the relatively small percentage of Americans who rely on Obamacare meant that an extension would do little to ease rising health costs that people across the country are experiencing.
But a core group of moderates has been arguing that a failure to extend a reformed version of them would force millions of Americans to grapple with skyrocketing healthcare costs this year.
Those moderates were also frustrated with Jeffries for not working with Republicans on a bipartisan solution to the subsidies but felt they were left with little choice but to support Democrats’ bid in the end.
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House Republicans passed a healthcare bill in mid-December aimed at lowering those costs for a broader swath of Americans, but that legislation has not been taken up in the Senate.
There’s also little chance the three-year extension will pass the upper chamber, however. Similar legislation led by Senate Democrats failed to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to advance in December.
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