17 Republicans vote to restore lapsed Obamacare subsidies

Seventeen Republicans joined Democrats in passing legislation Thursday that would revive enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years, rebuffing opposition from GOP leadership.

The 230-196 vote follows a procedural vote Wednesday to advance the bill, where nine Republicans joined Democrats in favor of moving forward.

Thursday’s final passage vote had eight additional Republicans supporting the bill, including House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino of New York and Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, a senior appropriator.

The vote was met with applause and loud cheering from Democrats, who said it was a vindication of their party’s strategy to pursue a clean extension of the subsidies.

“This is a tribute to [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries and our leadership, and to every member of our caucus who stood for him,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) after the vote.

While the measure is destined to die in the Senate, Democrats and some Republicans hope it will lay the groundwork for a bipartisan agreement to tame skyrocketing health insurance premiums — the result of Congress allowing the tax credits to lapse Dec. 31.

“The Senate could put together a product that could ultimately get sent back over to the House that we can then conference on and hopefully move across the finish line,” said Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), who supported the Democratic-led bill.

A bipartisan group of senators are scrambling to make headway on that framework that could extend the credits while instituting new income caps for eligibility and lengthening the ACA open enrollment period to soften the blow of premium hikes.

Earlier Thursday, members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus met with senators to discuss a potential solution. Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) said that the meeting — and senators’ plea to show a strong force on this vote in the House — influenced his decision to vote for the measure after initially being inclined to vote against it.

“There was a sentiment conveyed that if we could get a bill out of the House that had a meaningful amount of bipartisan support, that that would increase the likelihood that the Senate would take this up, pass a bill that has some reforms in it, and send it back,” Hurd said in an interview about the message communicated during the bicameral meeting.

The lawmakers continue to project optimism about reaching a deal, though thorny issues remain over how to address the so-called Hyde amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortion. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a centrist New York Republican who opposed the Thursday vote, said she continued to be concerned about “how riddled with abuse and fraud” the subsidy program is.

“We need to do something that actually simultaneously reins in insurance companies,” she said.

Democrats hope the House vote will pressure Republican leaders in both chambers to compromise on the issue. At a news conference Thursday morning, Jeffries and Chuck Schumer blasted Republicans for repeatedly refusing to back a clean extension before the subsidies expired last year.

“The American people should ask [Senate Majority Leader John Thune], ‘Are you willing to put this bill that the House now is moving forward on the floor of the Senate?’” Schumer said. “Most of the Republicans in the House and the Senate want to put poison pill riders about abortion on it. They are standing in the way.”

Jeffries is now especially emboldened, having made the calculation last fall that enough centrist Republicans would join Democrats in supporting a discharge petition to circumvent their own leadership and force a vote on three-year extension legislation.

And in a sign the pressure campaign might be working, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said Thursday night he couldn’t ignore the reality on the ground any longer.

“I have a bunch of my constituents that are depending on these programs, and I'm not going to leave them hanging because the Democrats broke the damn system,” he said.

The question of whether to extend the enhanced subsidies, which were established in a 2021 Covid relief package under a Democratic majority, has been one of the most divisive policy issues of the 119th Congress.

Republican moderates started raising alarms early in the fall that their constituents were staring down massive premium spikes in 2026 due to the looming expiration of the subsidies. But they quickly encountered strong headwinds from conservatives who lambasted the credits as rife with fraud and giveaways to insurance companies — a message that has been echoed by Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Johnson’s office, in a last-ditch effort Thursday morning to undermine the effort, blasted out a memo accusing “Democrats [of] want[ing] to expand a COVID subsidy system already flagged for massive fraud and abuse, with absolutely zero reforms.”

After the vote Thursday evening, Johnson said in an interview of the Republicans who defected, “I think it's a really bad policy, and I wish they hadn't, but everybody had a vote.”

Last fall, Johnson finally extended GOP moderates the opportunity to have a floor vote on an amendment to a Republican-authored bill intended to lower health care costs, but talks broke down. It led four Republicans to agree to help Democrats get the requisite 218 signatures on their discharge petition to force a vote on the three-year extension bill.

"I've been asking for a vote on this for at least six months, if not eight, telling leadership it just needs to be resolved,” said Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who voted for the Democratic-led measure, in an interview. “At some point we got to pull the trigger."

Nicholas Wu and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.