On Dec. 1, with time running out before tens of millions of Americans faced dramatic spikes in their health care coverage, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries played the only card he had left: The New York Democrat launched a discharge petition on a bill to keep existing Affordable Care Act subsidies in place for three years.
“We only need a handful of Republicans to join us in order to save the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans,” Jeffries said in a letter to his members. “It’s time for the do-nothing Republican Congress to proceed with urgency.”
Realistically, it seemed unlikely that any GOP members would sign on to the Democratic discharge petition — right up until some surprising developments on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning. NBC News reported:
Rebelling against their leaders, four House Republicans on Wednesday signed onto a ‘discharge petition,’ giving Democrats the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire for millions of Americans on Dec. 31.
If the enhanced premium tax credits expire, as is expected, insurance costs are projected to double, on average, for about 22 million Americans who get their coverage through Obamacare.
How we arrived at this point is a little complicated, so bear with me.
Late last week, House GOP leaders unveiled what they described as a health care “plan” intended to address rising costs. The blueprint, however, was more of a hodgepodge of loosely connected conservative ideas than a serious, cohesive policy proposal.
At the time, a handful of Republican members from competitive districts, likely fearful about their electoral futures, pleaded with their party leaders to allow a vote on extending the existing tax credits that make ACA coverage affordable.
On Tuesday afternoon, House GOP leaders closed the door and ruled out the possibility of a vote on protecting the subsidies.
At that point, the Republican members from competitive districts faced a choice: They could meekly go along with their party’s regressive decision and accept that GOP leaders had ignored their wishes, or they could use their positions to actually do something.
On Wednesday morning, four chose the latter.
It started with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who signed on to Jeffries’ effort, joining House Democrats and becoming the 215th signature on the discharge petition. He was then joined by Rep. Mike Lawler of New York. As the morning continued, two more Pennsylvania Republicans, Rob Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, also added their signatures, bringing the total to 218, which is the threshold needed to force a vote.
This, in turn, started the clock on a floor vote that House GOP leaders are powerless to stop. That said, the legislative procedures involved with a discharge petition can take a while, and the vote will probably be delayed until January — after key deadlines for health care consumers have come and gone.
As for House Speaker Mike Johnson, that four of his members signed on to the Democratic discharge petition is the latest in a series of embarrassments for the Louisiana Republican, following two other recent instances in which a majority of House members went around him to advance legislation he tried to keep off the floor.
“I have not lost control of the House,” Johnson told reporters on the Hill on Wednesday.
The funny thing about that is, House speakers in positions of strength don’t usually have to say, “I have not lost control of the House.” It’s assumed. No one ever heard Rep. Nancy Pelosi utter such a line because the idea that her leadership had deteriorated to such a degree was too preposterous to imagine.
And yet.
As for the road ahead, the House is likely to vote soon on the GOP’s pseudo plan, which is likely to be ignored in the Senate, if it can even make it out of the House. The Democratic plan for a three-year extension of the status quo, meanwhile, now has majority support in the House and Senate, and polls suggest a majority of the public supports it, too.
Republicans appear determined to let costs spike anyway. Watch this space.
