WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans have sent lawmakers home for the holidays without voting to address the Obamacare subsidies cliff that will hit millions of Americans on New Year’s Day — infuriating some of their own rank and file.
“Here we are without a deal enacted, with the subsidies about to expire. I think it’s totally unacceptable. It’s a failure of leadership, honestly, on both sides,” GOP Rep. Kevin Kiley of California said of the enhanced premium subsidies, moments after the House’s final votes Thursday afternoon.
Kiley is among dozens of GOP centrists in the House and Senate who have begged for weeks for their leaders to allow a bipartisan compromise to avert massive financial hardship for people across the country. Starting January 1, as many as 22 million people will see skyrocketing monthly premiums and some will be forced to forgo coverage altogether.
These members have insisted that a GOP-Congress can’t simply let the COVID-era subsidies expire without helping to blunt the impact in some way. But plenty more Republicans argue that it is a Democratic health care program that has failed – and should not be bailed out with more taxpayer dollars.
Internally, Republicans have been consumed by that battle for weeks, ending in no solution ahead of the deadline.
Some House centrists have been particularly vocal — even agreeing to buck Johnson by signing onto a Democratic effort to force a vote on extending the subsidies.
That dramatic move to defy GOP leadership has now set up a showdown when Congress returns from the holidays. By then, the issue may be even more contentious as millions of Americans feel the pain of higher premiums.
That vote is expected to take place the first week of January. Across the Capitol, a group of Senate centrists have been quietly strategizing about how to use that House-passed bill to pass their own compromise measure early next year.
Read the rest at WLKY.
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