On the brink of a shutdown, the top two Democratic leaders met with President Donald Trump in the White House on Monday and urged him to agree to extend Obamacare subsidies that expire at the end of the year in a bill to keep the government open.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said they had to explain the imminent consequences of inaction to Trump. People who get health insurance through Obamacare will begin getting notices in the coming days warning that their premiums will soon go up unless Congress extends the funds.
“He was not aware that Americans would pay — so many Americans, tens of millions of Americans — would pay huge increases in their health care bills,” Schumer told reporters. “And he was not aware that the real effect of that starts Oct. 1st, not Dec. 31st. So it seemed from his body language and some of the things he said that he was not aware of the ramifications.”
“We told the president he can solve the problem” by telling Republican leaders to “just take our provision” to extend the subsidies for Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and “put it in their bill,” Schumer said.
It has become the central demand of Democrats in exchange for their votes to fund the government, which will shut down Tuesday at midnight unless there is a deal.
Ironically, it could also improve the GOP’s prospects in the 2026 midterm elections if Republicans agree to extend the subsidies, according to some Republican pollsters. If health insurance premiums soar next year, these pollsters note, angry voters would tend to blame the party in power.
GOP pollster John McLaughlin made the case for extending the Obamacare funds in a recent opinion piece titled “A Health Care Tax Hike Poses the Greatest Midterm Threat to the GOP.”
“Having worked with President Trump for over a decade to transform the Republican Party from a party of country club losers to a winning majority party of working middle-class Americans, these are our MAGA voters who need this tax credit,” McLaughlin wrote. “Working middle-class Americans need affordable health care.”
Still, GOP leaders are adamant that they won’t allow it in this bill.
“It’s a purely hostage-taking exercise on part of the Democrats,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after Monday’s meeting at the White House. “We are willing to sit down and work with them on some of the issues they want to talk about, whether it’s extension of premium tax credits with reforms — we’re happy to have that conversation. But as of right now, this is a hijacking of the American people.”
Behind the scenes, Republicans are discussing ways to structure an extension of the enhanced subsidies — but with changes that would lower the current annual projected cost of $35 billion and have wider appeal in the party. But that would be as a separate bill, not attached to the short-term funding measure.
Republican ideas include winding the subsidies down after a few years, establishing new income-based limits for eligibility and beefing up restrictions on Obamacare money’s going to insurers who cover abortion.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said it’s important that everyone is “paying a little bit” for their health insurance coverage. He said the enhanced subsidies should wind down over three years, rather than continue permanently.
But he insisted that Congress can’t just let the funds end, because people who lose coverage would have no alternative.
“This is the only game in town for them, is Obamacare,” he said. “The rest of the individual market has been destroyed.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is close to Trump, said he believes his party is “going to put together, hopefully, a working group to fix the ACA.”
“The ACA fight continues. There are plenty of Republicans who would like to find some common ground,” Graham told NBC News on Monday.
Asked whether Trump is one of them, Graham replied, “I don’t know.”
He added: “I think so. I mean, once you understand the effect in November, I think a lot of Republicans want to find common ground.”
In addition, abortion foes like SBA Pro-Life America have been lobbying Republicans not to extend the Obamacare funds unless they are paired with additional restrictions on money going to insurance companies that cover abortion, two sources said.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said new abortion-related restrictions on the ACA funding will be part of any discussion.
“That’s important to our side,” he said.
But many Republicans, especially in the House, say the Obamacare funding should expire on schedule on Dec. 31. They have backup from a coalition of more than 30 conservative groups, who wrote a letter Friday telling Trump the money was a Covid-era subsidy that was “always supposed to be temporary.”
Meanwhile, Democratic operatives are already making plans to slam Republicans in the 2026 elections if they refuse to extend Obamacare tax credits set to expire at the end of this year.
“Republicans continue to attack affordable health care by refusing to fund ACA subsidies,” said CJ Warnke, a spokesman for the Democratic super-PAC House Majority PAC. “In 2026, we plan to ensure vulnerable House Republicans are held accountable with ads attacking them for defunding health care while rewarding the elite with massive tax breaks.”
In the strange world of Obamacare politics, some Democrats say the GOP is effectively rejecting an offer that would save Republicans from political harm.
“The GOP position is the political equivalent of breaking their own leg and then putting a blockade up to stop the ambulance,” said Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist and former senior Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aide.
A Republican strategist working on 2026 races said the party is torn on the issue and that it will defer to candidates to decide what’s best for their districts.
“We’re not advising any member to take a stance on it,” the strategist said. “We know there’s going to be numerous Republicans on opposing sides of this issue.”
It is “politically a good thing” for swing district members like Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., who has backed a one-year extension, to take that stance, the Republican strategist added. “But for hard-line conservatives, it’s going to be a tough thing.”
Some progressive advocates say the political danger for Republicans is the reason Democrats should demand even more than a continuation of ACA funding in a bill to prevent a shutdown.
“That’s why front-line Republicans are pushing for a short-term extension — so they can get through the midterms and then let them expire,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible. “I’d view a one- or two-year extension as more or less the Republican position.”
He said Democrats should insist on “a permanent extension” of the ACA money, as well as restoration of Trump’s Medicaid cuts and protections against the administration’s using “rescissions” to avoid spending money that has been directed by Congress.
