BURSTHouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Friday that a GOP commitment to address ObamaCare subsidies later in the year is not enough to end the government shutdown.
Jeffries said Republicans have tried for more than a decade to gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including a repeal effort in President Trump’s first term, leaving Democrats distrustful of any health care deals with GOP leaders that aren’t set in stone with legislation.
"Republicans have zero credibility, zero, on the issue of health care,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol.
He emphasized that the Democrats' position is that the ACA subsidies must be addressed immediately, as part of the current shutdown debate, and not be delayed until later in the year, as Republicans are insisting.
“What we've said to our Republican colleagues is we have to address the health care crisis that they've created decisively,” Jeffries said. “That means legislatively. And that means right now."
Democrats in both chambers are demanding that enhanced ACA tax credits, which were adopted during the COVID pandemic under President Biden, must be extended as part of any agreement to reopen the government. Without congressional action, those subsidies will expire on Dec. 31.
Republican leaders have rejected that entreaty out of hand, saying Senate Democrats — who have blocked a House-passed GOP spending bill seven times — must help to reopen the government before any negotiations on health care can begin. Because the ACA subsidies don’t expire until the end of the year, they say, Congress has time to work with.
“It's a clean bill,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Friday during a press conference. “I don't have anything to negotiate."
Amid the impasse, some lawmakers have floated the idea of having GOP leaders commit to a vote on the ACA subsidies later in the year in return for Democratic votes to end the shutdown now.
It’s that proposal that Jeffries shot down on Friday, emphasizing the Republicans long track record of opposition to the ACA, which they have characterized as a failed government takeover of private health care markets.
“In the last 15 years, they've done everything they can to try to repeal and displace the Affordable Care Act and tens of millions of Americans off of it, depriving them of the health care that they need so that people all across this country, including in rural America, can see a doctor or visit a hospital,” Jeffries said.
“That's what this fight is all about.”